Author(s)

H. S. Omar, M. F. Dulaimi

Abstract

Controlling construction site operations is one of the crucial overriding concerns for the clients and contractors, as the majority of the construction delays tend to occur in the construction phase. It is not surprising to see interest in deploying advanced technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) to help in addressing such concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how to integrate BIM with the daily construction activities to increase the effectiveness of construction operational activities and address customers and clients concerns and requirements.

The study adopted the qualitative approach to collect the data from different construction sites. Clients and numerous members of the supply chain were involved in the data collection, which covered projects, in United Arab Emirates (UAE), such as real estate building, infrastructure (e.g. water and waste water) and road projects.

The study concluded that, integrating BIM in the reoccurring daily construction operations highly assisted the construction industry to overcome several persisting and challenging problems related to the traditional disputes and mistrust among the supply chain players. These disputes resulted from the inaccurate data collection that leads to the absence of crucial actions, in addition to the huge time consumed to prepare reports. The results of the study suggest that, the integration of BIM with the construction operational activities have improved productivity and enhanced the trust among the project teams. Furthermore, the automation of the construction site activities using BIM avoided loss of information, enabled contractors to recognize their weaknesses, enabled immediate update of the progress reports and the program of works and the easy production of the payment statement.

Keywords

BIM, automation, productivity, integration, transparency and trust