Strengthening the Policy Landscape for BIM Adoption for Construction Work Health and Safety

Studies show that BIM has compelling benefits for work health and safety performance. Its capabilities for visualisation, information management, collaboration and simulation make it a powerful enabler for enhancing training, hazard identification, risk management and site monitoring. However, BIM adoption is inconsistent, even in advanced countries such as the United Kingdom, Finland and Singapore. While significant work has been conducted on technical, organisational and cultural features of BIM solutions, there is a lack of literature on conceptual and empirical studies on government policy that could strengthen BIM adoption. Our study investigated the Australian policy landscape to encourage widespread BIM adoption for improved work health and safety performance. This study had two research questions: (1) To what extent does the Australian policy landscape support the adoption of BIM for work health and safety? (2) What changes can be made to the policy landscape to better support the adoption of BIM for work health and safety? This study employed interpretivism and in-depth qualitative methods. We addressed the first research question with an explanatory model comprising 19 interrelated barriers, and the second with another explanatory model showing diverse strategies across six interrelated types of policy instruments, leading to outcomes that strengthen BIM adoption.