Evaluating the Alignment of Organizational and Project Contexts for BIM Adoption: A Case Study of a Large

Building information modeling (BIM) has been presented as a potential solution to current facilities management problems related to information exchange during handover, and facilities information management during operations. However, implementing BIM in an owner organization is a complex challenge that necessitates reconfiguration of work practices and internal structures to fully realize the benefits. Owners are often unsure about how or whether they should go through the challenges related to implementation. Although previous studies have documented the potential benefits of BIM adoption for owners, such as improvements in work order processing, very little research has specifically looked at the transition to BIM and the scale of the effort required for large and diverse owner organizations. This paper presents the results of a long-term embedded case study analysis of a large owner-operator institutional organization that investigated the alignment of facility management (FM) practices across organizational and project contexts. The research objective was to examine current organizational practices in order to understand the potential, as well as the challenges, of transitioning from a paper-based to a model-based approach in handover and operations. We describe the current state of handover, information management and facility management practices and developed a framework to characterize the alignment between organizational constructs, available technology, project artifacts and owner requirements. This investigation of the current state of practice enables us to OPEN ACCESS Buildings 2015, 5 1266 understand the gap between available and required information, processes and technology, and to better understand the enormous challenges owners face when considering the transition to BIM.