BIM and online collabortion platforms - an investigation into emerging requirements

It is widely documented that productivity in the AEC/FM industry has been hampered by fragmentation, low innovation, adversarial relationships and slow adoption of Information Communication Technologies. The rising recognition of the potential of Building Information Modelling (BIM), combined with online collaboration platforms, provides an opportunity for addressing those industry obstacles. This study reviews existing literature pertaining to how BIM and online collaboration platforms can facilitate the much desired integration within the industry. Subsequently, a scoping study for UK online collaboration platforms is carried out. Despite the expected benefits of BIM technology, it has not been widely embedded within the UK AEC/FM industry. This is mainly attributed to the incompatibility of current practices with BIM. Current collaborative practices still result in some rework, suboptimal design decisions, constructability issues and waste. Factors relating to the introduction of collaborative BIM practices revolve around a shared vision, clear responsibilities and technology ease of use. The essential role of online collaboration platforms for construction organizations reaching full BIM maturity is not yet fully appreciated. Additionally, corporate BIM strategies lack a clear vision. The scoping study identifies some trends in the evolution of online collaboration platform functionalities and sets the ground for a gap analysis