Understanding effects of BIM on collaborative design and construction: An empirical study in China

In construction projects, Building Information Modeling (BIM) influences on the common way of collaboration, including the roles of different participants. The goal of this research is to explore current practices and identify the critical effects of BIM on collaborative design and construction. Through a focus group discussion and interviews with BIM related participants, we explored project professions' understandings of BIM implementation on collaborative design and construction and adopted the grounded theory to analyze the qualitative data. Eight concepts influencing the development of BIM collaboration are identified and classified: (1) IT capacity, (2) technology management, (3) attitude and behavior, (4) role-taking, (5) trust, (6) communication, (7) leadership, (8) learning and experience. We discussed the taxonomy of BIM effects into three dimensions: technology, people and process. Our findings provide empirical insights into the collaborative nature of BIM construction projects and highlight the importance of collaboration within project teams in BIM project delivery.