DESIGNING A BENCHMARKING PLATFORM TO SELECT VDC/BIM IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGIES

Abstract

Recent VDC/BIM use surveys in the AEC industry and studies on implementation cases and models have provided insight into the adoption patterns of VDC/BIM methods. They have also shown the need for more systematic tools to identify the best implementation strategies that lead to improved performance at project and company levels. At the same time, the growing number of companies and projects implementing VDC/BIM presents an interesting benchmarking opportunity.
This study is an initial step in the formulation of a benchmarking methodology to support AEC companies in the selection of VDC/BIM implementation strategies. Using empirical information obtained from surveys, the methodology will assess how and how much VDC/BIM implementation strategies impact processes and results of companies and projects. We explored three mathematical methods to understand and communicate the relation between strategies, processes and outcomes: Data Envelopment Analysis, Factor Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling. The first method describes the efficiency of various implementation strategies to produce certain impacts on processes and outcomes. The factor analysis methodology reduces the strategy information into unobservable variables (factors) that are used for the structural equation modeling method to describe and quantify the impacts of these implementation factors on the company’s and project’s outcomes.
This paper describes the preliminary design of the benchmarking platform and the potential of the three mathematical methods for the analysis of benchmarking data.