Implementation of E-Procurement with BIM collaboration in the Construction Industry

Digitalization is the new trend in many industries; adopting digital tools is essential to cope with the fast-developing world. Construction is one of the most vital industries, but unfortunately, the industry lags behind other industries regarding digitalization. The industry faces many challenges, and in today’s modern world, construction projects have become more complex, and the need for new management tools is significant. A construction project integrates many participants with different interests in a complex process; in construction projects, the demand side is linked to the supply side through the procurement process. As a result, electronic procurement (e-procurement) with building information modelling (BIM) has to be implemented in construction projects in order to achieve better management for the procurement process. This study aims to analyze the use of e-procurement with BIM in the Finnish construction market. The study starts with a literature review discussing the traditional procurement methods and their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, the study discussed e-procurement procedure, benefits, implementation challenges, as well as BIM definitions, history, advantages and disadvantages. Furthermore, the last part of this study includes a questionnaire that has been sent to the industry experts to validate the theory part findings. The outcome of this study shows a high shortage of implementing e-procurement technologies. Only five people out of twenty-five of the study participants have worked with e-procurement platforms. Although BIM and e-procurement are not new technologies, the integration between them is still not achieved yet in the industry; in addition, there are limited examples in the literature in this regard. In the end, this study recommends that more research should be carried out on BIM-based e-procurement, provide a unified e-procurement tool for the private sector, increase the number of pilot projects of implanting BIM with e-procurement