BIM adoption and maturity anno 2021: a large scale empirical study on the current state of affairs

Abstract

This large-scale study aims to get insight in the level of BIM adoption and maturity in the Dutch construction industry. In this study, the focus is on BIM users, BIM non-users and those that are unaware and do not use BIM in six subsectors (principals, architects, engineers, contractors, suppliers and mechanical engineers) and the construction industry as whole. In total 725 respondents participated in this interview-based study, 235 of them actually used BIM (the BIM-users) and 342 knew about BIM but did not use it (the BIM non-users). The remaining 148 did not know about BIM and therefore were not able to answer the questions related to BIM and BIM-use. The architects and suppliers have the highest number of BIM-users, mechanical engineers and contractors the lowest. One third of the contractors and mechanical engineers in this study was not aware of BIM. For measuring BIM-maturity, firms were asked questions about BIM-strategy, organization- and project-structure, human & culture, BIM-processes, IT and data(-structure). The score for each criterion is a mean of the sub criteria that are part of that criterion. The overall BIM-maturity is a mean of these sub criteria. The overall BIM-maturity of the architects was the highest and of the principals and engineers the lowest. ICT component is the highest scoring BIM-maturity component within the entire construction sector while BIM-processes the lowest scoring component. The findings from this study can be used to inform organizations in specific subsectors of construction in which aspects of BIM they have to invest to increase maturity.