Perceived potential of BIM – the mediating role of practice.

Paper in proceeding, 2017

BIM is claimed to be one of the most promising developments in the industry and many researchers and practitioners seem to agree on BIM’s potential applicability in- and benefits for construction. However, what the potential, or full potential is, is a bit unclear. As well as for other Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), an objective full potential for BIM does not exist due to technology and knowledge development. But is there some alternative concept instead of potential that better capture the technologies enabling features and the interpretive dimensions? The concept of IT-affordance has been used to describe the appropriation of open ended flexible technologies and is described as: a potential for action that emerges out of the interrelationships among the technical features of a system, people’s ability and predisposition to use these features in certain ways, and the organizational context within which this takes place. The aim of the paper is to explore how the blend of technology’s features, people’s abilities and predispositions, and the organizational context influence the perceived potential for action (PPA). This will be achieved by a survey to three different groups: practitioners with and without experience of BIM-use, and last year’s bachelor students in civil engineering. It is concluded that experience of technology has a positive impact on PPA, but a blend of experiences from BIM use in practice and circumstances in practice has a strong negative moderating effect on users PPA. Among practitioners with experience of BIM, the PPA is aligned with the project logic. this is, PPA is strongly predicted by perceptions of BIM as mean for supporting decisions for cost reduction, at the same time as lack of internal competence is perceived as a constraint.