Facilitating Building Information Modelling (BIM) using Integrated Project Delivery (IPD): A UK perspective

Highlights

• We formulate a hypothesis to test if IPD is correlated with BIM implementation in UK.

• Using a relativist ontological approach, we test this hypothesis.

• We show that there is a positive correlation between the two.

• We demonstrate IPD can improve UK construction by defragmenting parties.

• We attest that IPD can facilitate BIM implementation in UK.

Abstract

The Construction industry is a major player in the UK economy and is in need of continuous improvement. In an attempt to do so, in 2011 the UK government made Building Information Modelling (BIM) level 2 a mandate for all public projects by 2016. Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a project delivery approach closely attributed to BIM. However, it does not seem to have received proportionate level of attention and uptake in the UK. The research into reciprocal impacts of BIM and IPD are few and far between and non-existent in the UK construction context. This research investigates if and how IPD can facilitate BIM implementation in the UK. Capitalizing on relativist ontology, the study uses a mixed methodology to gauge industry experts' perception of the barriers to BIM implementation and uptake and the barriers to what constitutes IPD principles based on what has been found in the literature. The research findings support the hypothesis that IPD does help overcome barriers to collaboration, improve early involvement of the key participants and enhance the level of trust among key stakeholders; thereby helping eliminate the barriers to implementation of BIM. The research has also identified the main barriers to implementing IPD, which if overcome, could improve construction performance in terms of cost, time, efficiency and productivity in the UK by defragmenting parties through its multi-party agreement structure, facilitating BIM, enhancing parties’ early involvement and collaboration through its inherent BIM contractual principles. The findings suggest that IPD can facilitate better and wider uptake of BIM in the UK construction industry.

Introduction

The construction industry is one of the major sectors of the UK economy as it contributes over £90 billion to the economy and offers 2.93 million jobs provided by more than 280,000 companies [1]. This sector has experienced a decrease in the UK's gross value added (GVA) from 8.9% in 2007 to 6.7% in 2011 as it was disproportionately affected by the recession in 2008 [1]. Worryingly enough there is a recurring pattern in the UK construction industry which, although frequently picked up by several independent studies or task force commissions [[2], [3], [4]], it does not seem to have been acted upon. Following upon what started over two decades ago, more recently Farmer's report (2016) asserts: “Deep-seated problems have existed for many years and are well known and rehearsed, yet despite that, there appears to be a collective reluctance or inability to address these issues and set a course for modernization”. In this regard, lack of value for money, time/budget overrun, unreasonable running and maintenance costs, unfitness for purpose, lack of skilled labor, and lack of standardization added by need for more off-site prefabrication to improve integration and coordination between design and construction are just to name a few. Construction projects face many issues of which some seem to have been caused by the delivery models. This has resulted in the industry yearning for alternative procurement methods, where a more collaborative culture can replace and improve the fragmented nature of the industry.

In April 2011, the UK Government mandated Building Information Modelling (BIM) Level 2 for all public projects in the UK by April 2016. BIM Level 2, was described by Bew and Richards, in their 4-level (0–3) BIM maturity model (Fig. 1), as “collaborative BIM”, where federated information models will be shared within a Common Data Environment (CDE).

The fact that this technology has the ability to satisfy the need for improved communication between stakeholders has led to it receiving a lot of support from a number of sources [[5], [6], [7]]. Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) was introduced in the US [8] to form a construction paradigm that targeted the improvement of the project cost, time and quality over traditional procurement systems. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) emphasize that although BIM can be implemented in most of the procurement systems, it would be in its best usage if it is implemented within IPD [9]. Existence of BIM and IPD show the opportunity to shift from the traditional to modern paradigm as a result of their advanced function and strength of cooperation [10].

The UK construction industry has made numerous attempts to improve collaboration amongst key stakeholders and to reward high performance teams, such as encouraging partnering. The advancement of IPD and its coupling with BIM could suggest, in theory, that potential improvements can be introduced in this regard. Despite progresses made in introduction, implementation and acceptance of BIM – which inherently thrives on collaborative working processes, there is very little evidence to suggest that a proportionate adoption of IPD (in relation to BIM or otherwise) has taken place in the UK construction industry. Furthermore, there is no such evidence to support that there is a move in that direction or that a sensible change in the existing profile of prevailing procurement methods in the UK has or is set out to emerge.

With this brief introduction, a number of questions will arise such as: what are the barriers to implement BIM in the UK building construction industry? Will IPD help eliminate barriers to BIM implementation in the UK building construction industry? If IPD is taken up to, how can it facilitate the implementation of BIM? The aim of this study is to investigate the possibilities and limitations for IPD to facilitate BIM implementation in the UK construction industry. In order to achieve this aim, a hypothesis has been developed to find out if IPD facilitates BIM implementation, that is: “IPD facilitates overcoming BIM implementation barriers”.

To fulfil the aim of this study and answer its research questions, this paper starts with a critical review of literature to identify the barriers to BIM implementation, nomenclature, concept and principles of IPD and finally to couple BIM and IPD through review of the state-of-the-art. The factors identified will then be used to design the research instrument which will have two different but not mutually exclusive sections to cover both quantitative and qualitative components of this research. This will be discussed in more details under research design and methodology section. Then data collection and analysis will be elaborated on where the hypotheses which were formulated in research design and methodology section will be tested. The result analysis will be followed by discussion of findings and concluded in the last section, concluding comments where some recommendations for future research will be provided.