The Effects of BIM Maturity Level on the 4D Simulation Performance: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Building information modeling (BIM) has attracted considerable interest in the area of 4D simulation. The performance and benefits of the 4D simulation can be affected by different factors, such as the organizational integration of the teams involved in the project and the models’ content, which is recognized as the maturity level of BIM. Despite the various advantages of implementing 4D BIM and the significance of obtaining the full potential of 4D simulation, there is a scant number of researches that have considered this issue. Thus, this study aims not only to assess the relationship between the performance of 4D simulation and different maturity levels but also to clarify the required Level of Development (LOD) and maturity level in BIM application to synchronize the BIM implementation process with its expected benefits. For this purpose, the differences in gained benefits of implementing 4D BIM in various projects, which had different BIM maturity levels, were examined. The results showed that promoting the integration of the BIM implementation process, considering suitable LOD for modeling, and clarifying the expectation from different parts of a project lead to an enhancement in the performance of BIM 4D simulation.