BIM based risk management for design bid build (DBB) design process in the United Arab Emirates: a conceptual framework

Abstract

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been experiencing the need for higher growth in gross domestic product (GDP) over the last few years. This growth necessitates the investments in major construction projects over the next few years. Unlike the projects in other industries, construction projects subjected to unique characteristics increase the probability of risks occurrence and their impact on achieving project objectives. Design stage was found to have a significant role in managing the risks during the project’s lifecycle. However; key challenges arise from the facts that the design phase has a numerous of interdependent, knowledge intensive multidisciplinary tasks and the overall process is inherently iterative in nature. This poor design interface management leads to project time overrun, cost overrun and poor quality output. Many tools and methods have been developed for the design information management. However these methods are not widely used except the building information modeling (BIM). Construction industry has benefited in many areas through BIM, and a natural consequent is to investigate its capabilities in managing risks. Literature review revealed that the existing BIM-based risk management frameworks required further development to manage the design phase related risks impacting the time, cost and quality of DBB projects. This paper proposed a conceptual BIM-based risk management framework to manage the design phase related risks for DBB high rise building projects in UAE. A framework has been validated through a case study. The results show that the risks can be effectively mitigated by implementing the proposed framework.