A framework to enhance the adoption of building information modelling amongst Sri Lankan quantity surveying organisations to increase the accuracy of pre-tender cost estimates

For decades, construction projects around the globe have been suffered to complete on budget due to ongoing cost overruns. Accordingly, both developed and developing countries have reported a number of construction projects that have resulted in increased initial project costs. As a result, several studies have been undertaken to investigate the causes of cost overruns and found that inaccurate project cost estimates are a major reason for project cost overruns. Conventional tasks, such as manual quantity take-off, the use of 2D drawings, and a lack of information that are embedded within the process when preparing cost estimates, were found to be challenging to produce accurate cost estimates. Nevertheless, through the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) many countries, both developed and developing, have been able to prepare accurate cost estimates by overcoming the consequences of conventional cost estimation practices. Many BIM adopted countries have identified drivers and barriers as part of the BIM adoption process and been able to develop BIM frameworks to enhance its adoption. Many studies indicate that BIM is a buzzword for the Sri Lankan construction industry and placed in BIM level 0. Majority of the quantity surveying organizations are lagging behind of adopting BIM to improve the accuracy of pre-tender cost estimates. Therefore, BIM adoption among quantity surveying organisations has often been criticised, as many have not yet adopted BIM within their practice. Although the literature indicates the importance of a nationally developed BIM framework, Sri Lanka not yet developed a BIM adoption framework by identifying national wide barriers and solutions. Accordingly, this research seeks to explore the issues behind non-BIM adoption to resolve the issue. This research inquiries into the drivers and barriers to BIM adoption, in order to provide affordable solutions. Thus, a framework if proposed to enhance BIM adoption, by identifying the gaps in BIM adoption (drivers and barriers) and the mitigating actions required to overcome these barriers. And the selection of a specific developing country would permit an in-depth understanding of the process of BIM adoption; thus, Sri Lanka was selected for the proposed purpose of this research. This study adopts an explanatory, sequential mixed method that applies a questionnaire survey and a semi-structured interview within a case study. The case study and survey data were collected separately in Sri Lanka from June 2017 to January 2018. The collected quantitative data was analysed descriptively and ranked using a relative important index analysis. The qualitative data were analysed using a thematic analysis technique to identify the themes and patterns. The results show that only a few QS organisations have adopted BIM. Nevertheless, it was found that six major drivers, namely BIM benefits, client demand, professional bodies, BIM-related training, organisational pressure, and BIM education, influence organisations to adopt BIM. Moreover, the use of a BIM model, automated quantity take-off, improved visualisation, improved information management, clash detection and timesaving were the highlighted as the key BIM benefits for QS organisations. In the meantime, the findings further identified the interrelationships between major drivers. Besides, six major barriers were also identified, namely financial, organisational, unawareness, the lack of market demand, the lack of resources, regulatory issues, and sub-factors, which hinder the adoption of BIM. In the meantime, findings further revealed the root causes for each barrier and identified interrelationships between the major barriers. Moreover, mitigating actions to overcome the impact of the barriers and their root causes were also identified. The analysis further showed that some of the empirical findings replicate those in similar contexts reported in the literature for other countries. A framework was produced and presented at the end of the thesis, which was designed to enable plausible means to overcome the impact of the barriers found. The proposed framework is expected to benefit quantity surveying organisations, architects, and other construction industry-related professionals to evaluate their strengths in BIM adoption (drivers) and to mitigate the impact of barriers that lead to the non-adoption of BIM. It is also expected to benefit construction-related professional bodies, governments, and academics by determining their role in support of BIM adoption