Modelling organizations' structural adjustment to BIM adoption: a pilot study on estimating organizations

Building information Modelling (BIM) promises a fairly radical revolution in all segments of the construction industry. Vital evidence has been used in many studies to elicit how fragmented processes in conventional construction systems, predominantly manual design systems and entity-based CAD often render design and project performance vulnerable. BIM is presented as having attributes that strengthen the frameworks for servicing efficiency in design and project performance. As BIM adoption continues to improve, various stake-holding practices that are involved in developing projects through integrated systems do require process models to help them simplify issues relating to multi-disciplinary integration – a direct opposite of what they are used to in fragmented systems. They also need to develop appropriate skills and strategies, including new marketing and administrative stratagems, to service intensive collaboration and other ethos of BIM. These are some of the inevitable changes to which organizations must respond in order to generate efficient results when adopting and deploying BIM. To examine organizational response to those process changes as promised in BIM, different organization models are explored with emphasis on their functional structures, namely: (1) matrix (2) networked (3) functional (4) divisional structure models. Data were collected from 8 construction and software development organizations in Australia through focus group discussions. 18 participants in core BIM skills took part in the study. Some interesting discoveries were made and reported on the industry’s reactions to BIM adoption. Conclusively, this study confirms the nature and direction of potential changes that BIM trigger.