In recent decades, the construction industry has met numerous challenges, such as lower productivity rates and disappointing returns on investment than other industries. This can result from gradual increases in labor costs, unforeseen costs due to the lack of coordination among stakeholders, and time-consuming changes in managing projects (Staub-French et al. 2011). Excessive cost in construction projects, as one of the reasons for the inefficiency of the construction industry is a common issue that affects project performance. Iranian projects are no exception to this issue. This is also the case in many developing countries, such as Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria, Ghana and Kuwait (Derakhshanalavijeh and Teixeira 2017). In Iran, as one of developing countries, construction industry experienced a steady decline in value added, eliminating its former advantage over other sectors of the economy (Dehghani and Hosseininia 2017). The situation of sustainable construction in Some developing countries in southeast Asia including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Brunei, Burma and Philippines is still in it’s infancy. Lack of awareness, training and inefficient procurement systems are major obstacles to sustainable construction (Shafii et al. 2006).
Building information modeling (BIM) is a technological concept that has been recently incorporated into project management and construction literature as one of the recent advances in this field. It has also been introduced as an emerging technology and process in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry (Kubicki et al. 2019), while revolutionizing the AEC industry (Swallow and Zulu 2019). BIM transforms traditional project execution practices into more robust and visualized efforts using inherent technologies and concepts (Gamil and Rahman 2019). BIM is the process of generating and managing building information over its lifecycle; however, in the beginning, BIM is a common source of information and communication between the entire building design and implementation team. This early information integration increases coordination, reduces errors and waste, and ultimately improves the work quality (Kymmell 2008).
Furthermore, the integration of information through BIM change the nature of existing and new building operations (Katipamula et al. 2017). When investigating and predicting side effects of a design solution, BIM-based approaches are much more effective and efficient than traditional ones (Jafari et al. 2020). The purpose of BIM is to promote collaboration between organizations and various AEC professionals to improve the productivity and quality of building design, construction, and maintenance (Li et al. 2019). Moreover, there are some advantages, such as more significant benefits, more accurate documentation, reduced rework, and reduced project implementation time (MCGRAW-HILL 2010). Studies show that in small projects, this technology slightly increase costs. Still, on a large scale, it is significantly cost-effective based on time saved with more efficient project operation (Boddaghi and Mousavi 2016). Some studies argue that BIM’s use increases the costs of the project design phase, but it can also reduce costs in the construction phase and ultimately reduce the total project construction costs (Lu et al. 2014). Taheripour et al. (2022) show that the adoption status of BIM in Iran is unfavorable. Tai et al. (2020) listed major BIM adoption challenges as lack of financial supports, unfamiliarity and improper encounter with the BIM concept, inadequate knowledge on BIM advantages, and lack of government support. In a similar approach, Babatunde and Ekundayo (2019) investigated existing barriers against implementing BIM into undergraduate curricula at universities. They have listed insufficient government support and leadership, faculty training costs, and lack of experienced faculty to teach BIM courses as main obstacles. Another reseach has stated that in higher education institutes researchers can motivate the instructors to adopt BIM and introduce its collaborative benefits in the construction industry (Mathews 2013).
Poirier et al. (2015) concluded that improved labor productivity was a key benefit of BIM, and prefabrication under the BIM model showed a productivity increase between 75% and 240% after all aspects of the contractor’s participation were quantified based on comparisons with the areas of the project that did not use the BIM model. Nath et al. (2015) examined two case studies in South Korea and showed that a BIM-based design effectively reduces construction industry losses by 4.3–15.2%. Won et al. (2016) showed a productivity improvement of about 36% based on the time length BIM was used and 38% for the entire project construction time. Ning et al. (2017) found that this tool improve design productivity by as much as 265% and reduce the required capital by 4.5% in the power generation unit compared to human-based design. Mesaros and Mandicak (2017) introduced the greatest advantage of using BIM technology as the reduced cost of managing construction projects.
McGraw-Hill Construction (2012) stated that BIM adoption in North America had increased more than 40% from 28% in 2007 within five years. In a similar report, McGraw-Hill Construction (2010) showed that the BIM adoption rate among European AEC/FM firms in 2010 was only 36%, and for South Korean AEC/FM firms, 58% in 2012. In 2014, 51% of all New Zealand and Australian users used BIM on about a third of their construction projects (McGraw-Hill 2014). More recently, National BIM has reported that 54% of U.K. architects, BIM managers, and project managers respondents were engaged actively with BIM, 42% were only familiar (no active engagement) with BIM, and only 4% had no clue about what BIM is (Malleson 2015).
However, in some countries with little experience in BIM implementation, the project stakeholders, especially in the private sector, usually have a low motivation to implement BIM and view BIM only as an expensive deception (Lu et al. 2014). There are reasons for slow BIM implementation in the construction sector in the planning and scheduling phase (Kiani et al. 2015). Despite the growing acceptance of BIM’s benefits, there is little research on measuring the costs and benefits of BIM to assess the financial impact of investing in BIM at the corporate level (Oesterreich and Teuteberg 2018). Even the research conducted in this area has reported a large-scale return on investment rate, as they are conducted in different countries where different parameters define the costs and benefits of BIM; moreover, the BIM implementation level in each of these studies is different (Azhar 2011). Therefore, measuring the costs and benefits of BIM in each country offer a quantified estimate of how each country responds to BIM measures. Research on BIM in Iran is mainly concerned with introducing the benefits of BIM, while a study that has measured the costs and benefits of BIM simultaneously is less frequent. Therefore, further research quantifying BIM in Iran provide valuable evidence, documentation, and helpful information for construction industry management in Iran and other countries. In this study, an attempt was made to obtain the costs and benefits of using BIM in three Iranian construction projects to answer the following questions:
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What is the maturity state of BIM implementation in these three projects?
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What were the benefits of the BIM functions used in these projects?
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What was the impact of the BIM implementation on the gained benefits?
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What were the costs and benefits of implementing BIM?
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Ultimately, what was the return on investment in these three projects?
In the following section, a literature review on the featured projects is used to present the research methodology described, and the research findings are presented herein, followed by a summary (conclusion) and some suggestions for future research.