Building information modelling : what is in there for the architects?

Despite the rapid growth in capabilities and availability of BIM supporting technologies the industry has been slow to adopt BIM in practice. A number of factors inhibiting BIM adoption have been reported in literature such as work practice, resistance to change, lack of business initiatives, and so on. Most of these researches have focused at specific disciplines of the AEC industry and surveys and questionnaires have generally been used to collect data. This paper reports on the findings of an action-oriented research that aims at developing strategies and measures for greater adoption of BIM in the industry. The findings reported in this paper build on the earlier research on BIM by adopting Focus Group Interviews (FGIs) as the source of data collection. FGIs provide a forum for the representatives from different disciplines in the AEC industry including architects, engineers, contractors, software application vendors, consultants, project managers, academicians and people from government agencies, to share their views on BIM adoption issues. The discussions were recorded on tapes and segmented and analysed using a coding scheme developed specifically for the study. This paper discusses the BIM related issues from the perspective of the architecture, primarily focusing on the awareness, perception and knowledge of BIM among architects. A discussion with respect to the other disciplines is also presented to demonstrate differences in perception across the design (architects/engineers) and non-design (contractors/facility managers) disciplines.