Explore the Factors limiting BIM adoption in construction!

In today’s world, the construction industry is rapidly progressing digitally, and BIM becoming an essential part of it. BIM is allowing the more intelligent use of resources and enhancement of workflows, managing the productivity and profitability. The advantages that BIM offers to construction are endless, but even then, the BIM adoption is not proceeding at the pace desired!

BIM adoption is witnessing an escalating trend as more and more decision-makers can understand how to construct a building by practical prototyping. They can also study the design more efficiently and can achieve more efficiency in construction. Also, if needed they can estimate alternatives concerning the cost and other parameters. However, some challenges restrict the permeation.

Thus, I wonder why even after so much of buzz, BIM is not the essential element for all construction projects. Some of the Challenges are acting as barriers, I believe.

So, Now the Question is what’s limiting the adoption of BIM?

The five essential factors that are mainly affecting BIM adoption in the construction industry includes:

• Difficulty in changing people’s attitudes
• Limited relevancy
• Interoperability issues
• Limited budgets
• Slack in following operating standards

Adoption of BIM

Resistance in changing habits

Well, all are aware of the Quote, ‘Old habits die hard.’ The same holds true in case of BIM adoption as well. The induction of BIM in the construction process needs the people involved to get familiarized with the modern technologies. Also, they get trained in them so that they can handle them efficiently. It calls for further efforts and coming out of comfort zones, and thus it meets with resistance. Most of the people associated with the construction industry have reached a specific age where they lack the interest to adopt new techniques, even if they seem encouraging. Hence, the resistance to change old habits limits the adoption of BIM in the construction industry.

Limited budget

There is not enough budget, and thus this issue mainly affects SMOs- Small and Medium Organizations. Adoption of BIM requires high implementation fee and training costs, which also involves the cost of hiring specialists, providing training to the existing workforce and composing an investment in new technologies. The SMOs usually do not have sufficient budgets to meet those extra expenditures. Cost tolerances frequently take over, and organizations prefer to support traditional systems as the associated expenses are known and efficiently managed. The organizations often fail to understand the long-term savings that adoption of BIM in construction will bring and also limit their vision to the short-term expense and benefit comparisons.

Avoiding standards

Standards play a vital role in assuring the broader adoption of BIM technologies, processes and collaboration by guaranteeing the same accurate data can get access throughout the supply chain. Standards assure continuity for the project and also provide the project owner with the setup they desire. They also have a significant bearing on productivity and confirm that the overall BIM implementation is sustainable and compatible. However, some of project supervisors or owners fail to build and enforce those standards diligently. Also, sometimes they end up referring to their own standards, creating difficulties and fallacies.

Interoperability issues

Interoperability working society defines Interoperability as, “Interoperability is a component of any product or system, whose interfaces are entirely understood, to operate with other products or systems, present or future, in either implementation or access, without any limitations.”

The Software interoperability gives the customers freedom to change from one product to another product while keeping the data intact after the variation. Since construction involves numerous stakeholders, it is essential to have the project data described in a standard interpretable form, so that it can accurately exchange between different computer systems and platforms. However, BIM suffers from interoperability problems, which restricts its adoption in the construction industry. Most of the software programs develop initially to work as standalone applications and they do not share data with other applications. Different tools would typically have their proprietary data structures. They often do not present means of linking their database to a standard. So, it generates the biggest challenge to interoperability. These issues must be spoken to make BIM a preferred choice between the stakeholders in the construction industry.

Limited Relevancy

One of the significant factors that are limiting the growth of BIM adoption in construction is its inability to generate value in the minds of SMOs, i.e., Small & Medium-sized Organizations. Most of them feel it is irrelevant. 71% of small firms think that BIM is merely applicable, or relevant, to the nature of their regular workload. They believe their projects are not complex enough to need BIM.

Thus, Construction firms may also feel confident that even without adopting BIM they are well-off. However someday this bubble will burst. BIM leads in cost efficiencies, enhances the speed of performance and profitability. The experiences of those who have already adopted BIM prove that the change is worthwhile. And therefore, those who will resist the change will remain behind.