BIM use in the production process among medium sized contractors – A survey of Swedish medium sized contractors

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is claimed to transform the AEC industry, whereas current research has argued that diffusion of BIM use proceeds at a slower rate than the optimistic predictions. However, governmental initiatives where public clients in countries like Finland, Singapore, United Kingdom and Sweden start to require a Building Information Model as a part of the project delivery, are supposed to increase the pace of diffusion of BIM use. Today, larger contractor firms use BIM to a varying extent. But BIM use in mid-sized contractor firms, with 50 – 500 employees, which successfully can compete with larger contractors on projects up to 50 million Euros, is relatively unknown. The aim of the paper is to explore the current use and perceived challenges and driving forces of BIM-implementation among mid-sized contractors. The data used in this study is collected through a survey send to chief executive officers, or their closest sub-ordinates, of mid-sized construction firms in Sweden. The survey is based on a technology-, organization-, environment framework that is used in information systems research in order to study the use of inter-organizational information systems. The total population of firms in the survey is 136. The preliminary results presented in this paper are based on 31 answers (30 percent response rate). 58 percent of the respondents said that they have been involved in a project where BIM has been used in some way. The most commonly used application is visualization. The highest obstacles perceived are that partners are not using BIM, there is no demand from clients, and there is no internal demand in the company. For the two last obstacles there were significant differences between users and non-users. The most common perceived driving forces were that BIM is a means for following the technical development and BIM can give the company competitive advantages. Moreover, the results indicate that the main driver behind BIM-implementation is mainly determined by an individual’s subjective positive or negative evaluation of BIM, rather than by external pressure from clients and partners, or by internal capacity and knowledge to use BIM