Abstract
Despite the increasing dissemination of the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach, many firms are still far from BIM and are only starting to adopt information technologies. We conducted an ethnographic action research with an industrial partner that implements information technologies on its construction sites, with a strong preference for home-made applications. Results show that the development of such applications faces difficulties and that multiple iterations and versions are necessary before achieving the expected goals because the required competencies are lacking among internal development teams. Moreover, initial needs evolve considerably throughout the application’s development and evaluation process. However, notwithstanding the difficulties encountered during the different application development phases, the industrial partner believes the decision to be worthwhile because of the desire to have internal control over the project data and the need to consider certain specificities related to business processes.
Highlights
In the last decades, the construction industry has undergone a digital transition, manifested by the growing role of information technology (IT) in practices (Kubicki and Boton 2014; Samuelson and Björk, 2014)
Notwithstanding the difficulties encountered during the different application development phases, the industrial partner believes the decision to be worthwhile because of the desire to have internal control over the project data and the need to consider certain specificities related to business processes
The results presented above show that many challenges have to be addressed before a mobile technology aligned with the construction site requirements can be proposed
Summary
The construction industry has undergone a digital transition, manifested by the growing role of information technology (IT) in practices (Kubicki and Boton 2014; Samuelson and Björk, 2014). In this context, the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach appears to occupy an important place, and several works have shown its added value and its uses at different stages of a construction project (Sacks et al, 2018). Several firms are still far from using BIM and are only starting to adopt information technologies (Kubicki and Boton, 2014).
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