Adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the Procurement Processes: Nigerian Construction Industry Milieu

Abstract

BIM is crucial to building clients and facility managers in terms of increasing building performance, automatic corrections when changes are made to the design, earlier collaboration of multiple design disciplines, automatic extraction of cost estimates during the design stage, discovering design errors and omissions before start of construction and so on. This research was aimed at identifying the imperatives of BIM adoption in the Nigerian Construction Industry and also pin point the most beneficial stage if BIM is embraced in the construction processes so that effort can be concentrated there when adopting the technology in the Industry. A quantitative research approach was undertaken for this purpose, from the Delphi survey conducted using a semi structured questionnaires the study was able to identified twenty-four (24) benefits of BIM within the Industry and with the help of thematic analysis approach they were later categorized into four (4) primary constructs. Thus; are Pre Design Stage Benefit (PDSB), Design Stage Benefit (DSB), Construction Stage Benefit (CSB) and Post Construction Stage Benefit (PCSB). From the analysis, It was observed that Design Stage Benefit (DSB) was ranked highest with 4.35 mean score as it tends toward high and extremely high. This emanated from the respondents’ view as a result of the BIM to allow for earlier collaboration of all design disciplines to make inputs in one another’s work which subsequently helps minimize errors and omissions. Similarly, BIM enables consistency of all working drawings to the design intent and allows for automatic corrections when changes are made in the design process and provides opportunities to review alternative options.