Research on barriers with BIM implementation in facilities management: An interview study to investigate the main challenges and prospects of BIM in FM

Abstract

This study investigates the underlying barriers to implementing BIM in facilities management by directly interviewing FM practitioners and consultants by obtaining their perspectives on this challenge in order to get a better understanding of the underlying causes of BIM's slow adoption in FM. Since this thesis is trying to describe a phenomenon in context, the qualitative research approach was chosen since the data gathered will not be numerical. The results of this study show that there are some differences in understanding of BIM in FM and that the construction industry has a vague perception of what type of information is vital to FM. The results also indicate that the main challenges with BIM integration in FM is information requirement and data-up-to date, with knowledge gap and information quality as the second most common barriers. To summarise the findings of this study, it was discovered that BIM execution and information management were the most commonly encountered challenges in BIM integration, followed by technological challenges. The root causes of the challenges of BIM execution and information management are information requirements and keeping the model up to date, which leads to a need for delegation of responsibility and the creation of new roles. Additionally, the root causes of technological challenges appear to be an excess of BIM softwares, the use of proprietary formats in the AEC industry, and the legacy of old FM systems.