Critical Strategies for Enhancing BIM Implementation in AEC Projects: Perspectives from Chinese Practitioners

The production of the architecture engineering and construction (AEC) industry is organized by projects. With the diffusion of information and communication technology in the industry, building information modeling (BIM) is widely adopted in AEC projects. However, the systematic implementation of BIM in AEC projects experiences challenges. This study aims to identify critical strategies for enhancing BIM implementation within the AEC project context. Initially, 17 strategies are drawn from a comprehensive review of the relevant literature. Through a questionnaire survey with 116 effective responses from the practitioners, ten critical strategies are identified, with the top five being clearly defined plans and objectives for BIM implementation, financial support, capabilities and skills in BIM technology, availability and interoperability of engineering information and data, and the aligned objective of BIM implementation with the project goal. The study also investigates the possible discrepancy in the different actors' assessments on the criticality of the strategies to validate the survey. The further principal component analysis groups the strategies and finds five latent factors of the strategies, including institutional governance, change accommodation, technical environment, cooperation, and resources. This finding reveals that systematic BIM implementation is inevitably associated with the AEC project context and indicates that the enhancement of current BIM implementation in projects covers the strategies of the technical, institutional, and managerial aspects to accommodate changes brought by BIM. An international comparison of the top drivers with the found peer studies from Nigeria, Singapore, and Turkey classifies leadership as a driving force to incorporate BIM into the AEC projects. The results provide implications for enhancing BIM implementation in AEC projects and may help improve the efficiency of the industry.