The business value of BIM for asset owners : a cross case analysis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify the activity systems that drive Building Information Modelling (BIM) business value in Asset Management (AM). The utilisation of BIM has widened in scope, functionality, flexibility and interoperability to support the AM business process. However, research concerning BIM business value in AM has been inadequate despite its considerable potential and significance in the attainment of organisational objectives. The realisation of BIM business value requires a concerted effort by the asset owner to be able to determine and appraise the critical activities that drive business value in AM. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted a qualitative research approach based on a multi-case study strategy that aimed to identify the key business processes that drive BIM business value in AM. The study involved a three-stage research design using interviews and document analysis to facilitate a cross-case analysis from the perspective of the activity systems and dimensions of BIM governance. Findings – The paper identified six critical activity systems that drive BIM business value for an asset owner: BIM strategy, contract management, lifecycle management, maintenance management, work-order management and value realisation management. The study found that the most developed activity system is the BIM strategy, and the least is value realisation management across all cases. Also, the paper points out that the most proficient BIM governance dimension is Process, and the least is People across the three cases. The study noted that the ability of an asset owner to realise BIM business value has maturity undertones and that the asset owner could derive BIM business value, if the six activity systems are effectively executed and continuously improved to an advanced stage of maturity. Originality – An original contribution of the study is the development of the understanding of asset owners in relation to the discovery of key activity systems that drive BIM business value in AM. Another significant contribution of this paper is the demonstration of a novel approach to evaluate organisational maturity of asset owners from the perspectives of the activity systems and BIM governance dimensions of people, process and technology

BIM business value for asset owners through effective asset information management

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the processes, tools and techniques of strategic asset information management (AIM) for built assets, and how the asset information content enhances the proficiency of asset managers to effectively manage their assets throughout their life cycle by utilising building information modelling (BIM) and asset management (AM) systems. For most asset managers, the problem is not the lack of information about their assets, but the abundance of it, and most especially the absence of established processes and protocols to effectively manage large sets of asset data. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a strategy to control and manage this information in order for asset managers to harness its potential and realise value from their organisation’s information assets. A qualitative case study strategy was used to investigate the effective management of asset data in an AIM system. Seven sets of interviews were conducted and nine respondents were interviewed. These were analysed through qualitative thematic analysis using the NVivo software. The paper identifies six dimensions of value that BIM contributes to AM, which are: management, commerce, efficiency, industry, user and technology value. Also, the paper demonstrates that there is real value to be derived by the asset owner from the effective management of asset information. The study highlights that the value of BIM is not inherent but would require many other processes to deliver value to the organisation. The key value of the paper is that it identifies important techniques for managing asset data and how asset information is collected, organised, stored, controlled, analysed, secured, shared and reported within a virtual AIM system for strategic management-based decision

BIM business value generation theory : a grounded theory approach

Theoretical developments in the Architectural Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry have been deficient, especially for the operations and use phase. The need for asset owners to understand the Building Information Modelling (BIM) process and to realise business value from BIM implementation cannot be over emphasised. This study investigates a BIM-based Asset Management (AM) system to examine how business value can be created for the asset owner. The BIM-based AM system is evaluated from the Transformation-Flow-Value (TFV) generation view to define the characteristics and functions. This is followed by the grounding of data to develop a novel explanatory theory through the development of conceptual categories. A qualitative research approach based on a grounded theory methodology is utilised to generate a proposition on how BIM can create value in an AM system. The study involves a five-stage research design using interviews and document analysis to inform the phenomenon of BIM business value creation in AM. The paper highlights that BIM business value generation in AM is dependent on three main categories, which are: development of the information requirements, creation of the information content and management of the information content. From the grounded data, the study finds that it is crucial for asset owners to develop their information requirements since the information requirements development category guides the data creation, data management and value generation. Furthermore, the development of a sound rationale that appropriately translates the organisational business objectives is critical to value generation. The paper studies how BIM can create business value in an AM system using a grounded theory methodology. The results show that the rationale for developing BIM-based information requirements determines the value that will be generated by the AM system. The key contribution of the paper is that it presents a novel theory for BIM-based AM. One of the contributions of this study is the demonstration of the application of grounded theory within the AEC industry. Also, the study demonstrates the relationships between concepts and how they emerge from the grounded data

BIM business value for asset owners : key issues and challenges

There is a need to develop the understanding of asset owners concerning the constraints of building information modelling (BIM) implementation, and its subsequent value realisation activities in asset management (AM) cannot be overstated. This is because the life cycle cost of a built asset is three times more than construction costs and five times more than the initial investment outlays. Hence, this paper investigated and identified the key issues and challenges of realising BIM business value in AM. The study adopted an explorative and deductive approach. A qualitative four-stage research design strategy was adopted using 10 semi-structured interviews and document analysis to collect data. These were analysed through qualitative thematic analysis. The study identified 15 key barriers and classified them from the perspective BIM governance dimensions, namely people, process and technology. Furthermore, the study identified that more process-based challenges are experienced than people or technology. Of the identified challenges, three are people-related, eight are process-related and four are technology-related. The analysed results focussed on the development of the understanding of asset owners, policymakers and researchers regarding the complex challenges that hinder BIM utilisation and value realisation in AM. The findings of this paper support progress towards enhanced BIM adoption in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry by highlighting the significance of the identified challenges, their nature (people-, processor technology-based) and the resultant effect on BIM business value realisation during asset operations. The original contribution of this study was the exploration and identification of the current challenges experienced by asset owners in implementing BIM during asset operations and how these affect the derivation of BIM business value

Development of a BIMAsset Maturity Model

This paper presents a BIMAsset Maturity Model (BAMM) which demonstrates how asset owners can appraise the maturity of their organisations in relation to their capability of realising Building Information Modelling (BIM) business value in Asset Management (AM). The study aims to develop and enhance the understanding of asset owners in relation to techniques of appraising key business processes that help derive BIM business value during asset operations. The study utilises a qualitative multi-case study strategy to develop a maturity model that is specific to the domains of BIM, AM and value realisation management. Also, this study adopts an inductive approach using semi-structured interviews to collect data. Furthermore, an expert panel in the form of a focus group is utilised to validate the BAMM. This study finds that the ability of asset owners to derive BIM business value during asset operations has maturity implications in relation to certain key business processes. Furthermore, the study reveals that business value can be derived by the asset owner if organisational processes such as BIM strategy, contract management, lifecycle management, maintenance management, work-order management and value realisation management are effectively executed and continuously improved to an advanced stage of maturity. An important contribution of the paper is that it presents a novel approach for evaluating owner-operator organisations using the BAMM from two perspectives; AM business processes (BIM strategy, contract management, lifecycle management, maintenance management, work-order management and value realisation management); and BIM governance dimensions (people, process and technology)

BIM-based operational information requirements for asset owners

It is widely recognised in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry that asset owners do not really understand their information needs for effective BIM-based Asset Management (AM). Hence, they may be unable to develop their operational information requirements to request the right data from the design and construction phases. This paper investigates the operational information requirements of three asset owners through a comparative study. A qualitative multi-case study approach was used to collect and analyse the operational information requirements of three asset owners. A qualitative content analysis was also utilised to identify key asset information requirements and categories. The study revealed that operational information requirements are strongly related to business needs and that it is not possible to develop a rigid list of requirements for asset owners, but rather some templates to help them define their data requirements. Of a total of 172 analysed information requirements, only 7 requirements were common in all cases and 16 were common in 2 cases, which represents 4% and 9% of the total. The research addressed a significant research gap regarding the development of operational information requirements for asset owners. Moreover, the paper provides templates to help guide asset owners when defining their data requirements for asset operations in order to derive BIM business value