Maturities in Building Information Modelling: a multi-level perspective

Although the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has driven digitalization in the construction industry for more than a decade, not all organizations are equally mature in its use. Given the fragmented and multidisciplinary nature of the construction industry, these variations in maturity lead to challenges in inter-organizational collaboration. As a result, expected benefits from BIM use are not always realized in practice. This thesis disentangles and explains variations in BIM maturity and their effects on the implementation and use of BIM on the sector, organization, and project levels of analysis. The gathered insights shine a light on the various stages of implementation, and the associated barriers, and highlights the impacts of variations on inter-organizational projects.

The thesis first presents the development of a method to evaluate the BIM maturity of organizations that is applicable to different subsectors and incorporates both organizational and technological aspects of BIM. This model is then applied in an in-depth organization-level analysis linking BIM maturity to barriers regarding BIM implementation and use. A mapping of barriers on to various organizational levels (i.e., top management, middle management, project level) provide actionable knowledge on where to take effective implementation measures. Following this, a multiple-case study was conducted to explore the relation between the project’s BIM maturity and the maturity of individual project partners. This study further reveals strategies that project managers use to cope with variations of project partners’ maturity. Finally, the thesis adopts a Team Mental Model perspective to consider BIM use in projects. In literature, a positive relation between Team Mental Models (a shared understandings of a team’s aims and tasks) and project outcomes is widely assumed. This relationship is studies in the yet unexplored context of inter-organizational BIM use.

Concluding, the thesis contributes to the literature on BIM, but also elaborates on the more general theory related to the construction industry’s fragmentation, its consequences, and ways of overcoming related obstacles. Gained insights can serve as a guide in promoting the further professionalization of inter-organizational BIM use and can be extended regarding future BIM uses and other upcoming digitization developments in the industry.