A framework for improving collaboration patterns in BIM projects

Abstract

BIM is often presented as a collaborative platform. However, the core principle of BIM is about sharing data through centralized or distributed platforms. Collaboration is not at the heart of BIM. It is about requiring the actors of the construction project network to reconfigure their patterns of relationships to facilitate the production and exchange of the project data and the information processing using this platform. Organization of work in construction is highly linear and fragmented, and the construction project stakeholders don’t have the tools to understand and represent how information is created and processed among them. This paper presents a collaborative mapping approach that help construction project stakeholders to visualize the existing patterns emerging from their use of BIM. Through a collaborative action-research project, different key stakeholders are invited to participate into the co-construction of a visual mapping of the information processing for the production of the BIM model within the various organizations. The mappings for the whole project were assembled to extract the divergent perceptions and domain-based visions of each participant. The main contribution of this research is a framework for the co-construction of a project process modelling. The aim is to reduce the barriers and conflicts that emerge in a collaborative process.