Standardisation of Building Information Modelling in the UK and USA: Challenges and Opportunities

Standardisation provides an invisible digital infrastructure within which digital design technologies support coordination by heterogeneous actors in the construction sector. Inadequate standards pose challenges to design technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM). In its latest strategy mandating the use of BIM, the UK government blames the construction industry’s lack of collaboration and inefficiency on low levels of standardisation. This paper investigates the development of standards as invisible digital infrastructures for facilitating collaboration in construction projects in the USA and the UK. The paper draws on a) interviews with key standards development consultants in the UK and USA and b) industry publication and revisions to the British standard through the publicly available specification (PAS) 1192 and NBIMS in the USA. The literature on standardisation suggests that engagement in standard development is often motivated by self-interest; and that standards are developed through consensus building, political processes of aligning multiple standards, and end-user participation. Findings from the empirical work to date suggest a rapid process of development, excessive self-interest, minimal end user participation and incompatible processes. The study concludes with observations on how digital infrastructures develop and could be useful in shaping practice and how such artefacts are integrated in dynamic, unstructured and rapidly developing project based environments. The paper contributes to literature on evolution and proliferation of digital infrastructures in sectorial systems of innovation.