Titolo della tesi: DRIVERS AND BARRIERS FOR BIM ADOPTION IN PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS
Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a set of interacting policies, processes and technologies that produces a methodology to manage the build assets in digital format throughout the building’s life-cycle, from earliest conception to demolition.
BIM is transforming and revolutionizing the way assets are conceived, designed, constructed and operated, impacting the whole Architecture, Engineering & Construction (AEC) global industry. Nowadays BIM is attracting always more interest and gaining always more importance in the AEC industry. In addition to this, it is vital to understand that Public Administration (PA) can play a vital role in stimulating and encouraging BIM adoption for the entire construction sector, being a steering-wheel as well as a stimulus.
Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to study BIM adoption process in PA context from the managerial perspective. In particular, the main goal is to understand and to discuss which are the drivers and the barriers guiding the process of BIM adoption in a public organization.
Firstly, a literature review has been conducted in order to investigate the impact of BIM in public and private contexts from a managerial perspectiveand to find the most important drivers and barriers influencing the decision to adopt BIM. Moreover, the papers dealing with BIM in the public administration sector have been analysed in detail in order to give a full perspective on the topic. From analysis of literature, it emerges that there is a great majority of papers privileging an empirical research approach and a scarcity of papers dealing exclusively with the Public sector. The considerable imbalance between the number of papers in the two streams of research shows a lack of concern toward the public context so far. Moreover, from detailed analysis of papers dealing exclusively with BIM in the public administration, it emerges that the most relevant streams of research concern the role of public agencies in BIM implementation and the efforts provided by public sector in BIM development.
The second part of the thesis is focused on the exploration and analysis of the experiences of BIM adoption in a public organization. In particular, this aims to identify the most important drivers and barriers in order to understand:
how public administration can lever on drivers to foster an effective BIM adoption;
how public administration can overcome barriers of BIM adoption.
In this regard, a multiple case study has been conducted involving 4 Public companies and 1 private organization (operating a public service in concession), in order to ensure a full-encompassing view on the phenomenon.
Results from multiple case study shed light on three essential drivers, which are: (1) Top management’s support, (2) Agreement among the members of the organization and (3) Availability of staff that supports, pushes and fosters BIM adoption. Moreover, another key finding concerns the ability for companies to perceive business value and to acknowledge the competitive advantage behind BIM. This, in turn, leads to the need for public organizations to disseminate BIM and transmit a clear perception of its usefulness and benefits to the whole organizational structure.
The main barriers hampering BIM adoption in public organizations are related to typical characteristic of their context, which are: (1) Low propensity to innovation, (2) Difficulty of intra-organizational and business innovation and (3) Change management challenges. Moreover, public organizations have difficulty in perceiving the value and potentiality of BIM (e.g. insufficient and inadequate evaluation of BIM value), which is strictly related to the drivers mentioned above.
Beyond the strictly organizational context, the research considered the Project-based environment, where Public Clients fully recognized that BIM improves overall management of construction processes and projects. Furthermore, in public project environment the main barrier emerged is the Difficulty to achieve the inter-organizational collaboration, mainly relating to the lack of collaboration among different organizations involved in the BIM process. Results from multiple case study confirmed the crucial role of Public Client to support and lead BIM adoption in project environment and, especially, the pivotal role of Public Client for BIM diffusion in the construction sector.
Originality of research
This work provides an original contribution in the advancement of knowledge about BIM, defining the most important drivers and barriers that affect the decision to adopt BIM in the Public Administration context. Moreover, the thesis clearly explains and systemizes how Public Client should act in order to support and foster BIM diffusion in construction industry, included project-based environment.
Future research
Noteworthy future research streams in public context that derive from this thesis are below described.
1) From literature analysis it emerges that BIM has been studied in contexts characterized by static nature (e.g. planning of a building or infrastructure construction), but potentially it has not been studied in the context of greater dynamism as emergency management could be (e.g. reconstruction of prefabricated buildings after an earthquake or reconstruction of bridges after a flood and so on). Therefore, a future research stream should be aimed at analyzing the possible applications and potentialities of BIM in emergency management context.
2) Future research should be aimed at finding the best practices for BIM implementation in Public Administration, based on the taxonomy framework used in this research.
3) From case studies emerged that the Acknowledgment of BIM data value is a crucial driver for BIM adoption in the whole AEC industry. This point should be the subject of an in-depth study, for instance about the economic value of data, their marketability and cybersecurity (the role of blockchain technologies and antifraud practices).