Comparison of virtual communication environment for remote BIM model review collaboration

Remote building information modeling (BIM) model review collaboration is the trend in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Virtual communication environment is a key factor in a successful collaboration. However, the proper environment has yet to be fully revealed. Therefore, this study aims to identify the effective environment. We identified the environment with three main types and then proposed and developed the corresponding environment namely BIM-based, PC-based virtual BIM reviewer (VBR), and VR-based VBR. A user test has been conducted to evaluate their performance and task loading in finding issues and reaching consensus. In the test, the participants were asked to find four kinds of issues and determine the top five issues and their solutions. The result shows that in finding issues, the average of issues they found in BIM-based, PC-based VBR, and VR-based VBR are 6.57, 9.77, and 9.91. The performance of PC-based VBR and VR-based VBR are no significant difference ( = . ) but both of them are significantly better than BIM-based ( = . . ). However, the averages of task loading in finding issues are 899.50, 813.84, 807.00 with no significant difference. In reaching consensus, the averages of seconds they used are 740.67, 682.93, and 724.40 with no significant difference. However, the averages of task loading in both of PC-based VBR ( = . ) and VR-based VBR ( = . ) are significantly lower than BIM-based ( = . , = . . ) . In overall, both PC-based VBR and VR-based VBR have better performance in finding issues and lower task loading in reaching consensus.