Building information modeling (BIM) is an important technology in the design and construction of buildings. BIM is also used in the construction of building equipment. In recent years, construction companies have been promoting the introduction of BIM. Typically, the technologies of building construction are introduced for each department. However, BIM has been promoting technology introduction beyond departments and companies. Therefore, we analyzed the process of introducing BIM in construction companies. We also analyzed the proportion of companies that introduced BIM, process of technology introduction, and the organizational form of the construction companies.
In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey of construction companies about BIM. Based on the questionnaire results, we performed an analysis of corporate organization as follows.
1. Analyze the relationship between the respondents of a department and technician experts by cross tabulation.
2. Classify respondents by factor analysis.
3. Discuss the motivation behind introducing BIM by covariance structure analysis.
The percentage of companies that have used BIM in their construction projects was approximately 32%. Moreover, 40% of the survey respondents collect BIM information. More than 50% of the respondents think that construction work using BIM is more efficient than the traditional construction work. These results mean that BIM entered a stage of popularity. On the other hand, the percentage of engineers that manipulate 3D-CAD or BIM is only approximately 23%. The occupation of the highest percentage of 3D-CAD users is construction engineers of building equipment. Architects are also a high percentage of 3D-CAD users. Then, we created a contingency table (Table 4) for the relationship between the current department and the specialized field of survey respondents. All personnel who belong to the building construction department are part of the specialized field of building construction. On the other hand, 22% of the personnel who belong to the architectural design department are part of a different specialized field of architectural design. Next, we performed an exploratory factor analysis on the questionnaire results. Maximum likelihood estimation with a promax rotation of 32 Likert scale questions was conducted on data gathered from 212 participants. The results of the promax rotation of the solution are listed in Table 8. When loadings less than 0.35 were excluded, the analysis yielded a seven-factor solution. The seven factors were labeled as follows: "Expectations of BIM (Factor 1)", "The degree of information gathering about BIM (Factor 2)", "The need for the introduction of front-loading (Factor 3)", "IT skill levels of the respondents (Factor 4)", “Adequacy of information equipment in the belonging company (Factor 5)”, “Growth potential of the construction industry (Factor 6)”, and “Dissatisfaction with the current construction technology (Factor 7).” Moreover, we performed a hierarchical cluster analysis by selecting three factors—Factor 2, Factor 4, and Factor 6. As a result, we classified four respondent groups. In addition, we analyzed of the motivation behind the introduction of BIM by structural equation modeling (SEM). The results of SEM analysis are shown in Fig. 12. SEM supposes that motivations behind introducing BIM are to improve productivity of the construction work.
