Aligning building information model tools and construction management methods

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Technology implementation Cost estimating Risk management Building information model Technology pull 4D Quantity take off Construction management Work processes Few empirical studies exist that can explain how different Building Information Model (BIM) based tool implementation strategies work in practical contexts. To help overcoming this gap, this paper describes the implementation of two BIM based tools, the first, to support the activities at an estimating department of a construction company and the second, to support risk management activities on a large infrastructure project. Using the cases, we illustrate that it is possible to closely align the functionality of existing BIM based tools with specific and well established construction management work processes. In this way, we illustrate that it is possible to implement BIM based tools in construction organizations in a "technology pull" manner. With these findings, we complement existing implementation theories in construction management that advocate "technology push" implementations during which existing work processes need to be radically changed to align with the function-ality of the BIM based tools. The introduction of building information model (BIM) based tools to support the work of construction management organizations is still a problematic task in practice. It is not surprising, that many researchers have tried to address the problem by trying to explain why and how implementations were successful or unsuccessful. Influenced by Rogers' [1] diffusion of innovation theory this existing work mainly analyzes technology implementations from a technology push view. These views mainly proliferate the vision to use BIM to best support as many business processes as possible across all different organizations that are involved throughout the life-cycle of a building project [2,3]. It is not surprising that most of the prior work has identified the loosely coupled structure of the construction industry [4,5] as the main barrier for implementation. As a solution, these authors suggest that project teams need to align their work processes to the new " collaborative and integrated ways of working " that BIM based tools require [2]. The argument that follows from these assumptions is then that a top-down technology-push implementation is necessary to successfully change construction organizations and, in turn, to allow for the meaningful use of BIM based technologies [2]. Within practical BIM based tool implementation settings this top-down view is limited as it is seldom feasible to significantly change existing work processes to …