Leading UK Construction Companies’ Strategies to Tackle BIM Training and Skills Challenges

Abstract

Widespread adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) is firmly on policy agenda in several countries. Despite emphasis on governments’ ambitions for industry-wide BIM adoption, there is scant understanding about what construction firms need to do regarding training provision and how to do that to meet policy goals. There is, therefore, little evidence of how construction companies have tackled this challenge internally and on projects in existing studies. Through a qualitative research approach and case studies of two leading UK construction companies, this paper describes the different strategies that construction companies adopt to provide the requisite skills and training for their workforce and their project supplier network partners to successfully support and sustain the implementation of BIM. The findings show that successful main contractors employed an “in-house” training strategy at intra-organizational level and a “growing together” approach for their project supplier network partners. In providing BIM training, these firms tackled problems of heterogeneity in workforce digital literacy and competencies, a lack of attention to soft skills, and a lack of understanding of BIM benefits using tailored and role-specific training. These insights contribute to the growing literature on BIM training, complementing the existing literature that focuses mainly on BIM training through education.