BARRIERS TO BIM IMPLEMENTATION IN BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to find the barriers that hinder the implementation of BIM in bridge projects (BrIM). This was done by a bibliographic analysis and the application of an evaluation tool to a case study, corresponding to a Chilean road project with an important number of bridges. Based on the literature, twenty-three barriers were found, which were then validated through the application of the survey to the case study, resulting the main barriers: “Interoperability problems between different BIM software”, and “Differences between BIM for buildings and BIM for bridges”. Then, a risk analysis was run, concluding that the barriers in bridge projects cause high levels of impact when implementing BIM. Thus, this research may help project and engineering managers to have a first approximation to the most recurring barriers in BrIM and how to rank them according to their impact. Finally, for future research, the findings of this study can be extended to other complex projects —such as bridges— but with different levels of uncertainty, that allow finding new barriers or confirm those found here.