Total BIM on the construction site: A dynamic single source of information

Journal article, 2023

Digital technologies are rapidly transforming the construction industry, offering new opportunities to improve site work performance. Traditionally, site workers take information from static construction documents such as 2D paper drawings. However, in the Nordic region, a dynamic approach known as Total BIM has gained interest. Total BIM is a model-based approach to construction where BIM replaces 2D drawings as the contractual and legally binding construction document, and site workers use production-oriented, cloud-based BIM, on mobile devices to extract construction information. By having a dynamic single source of information, site workers face new demands as they independently extract construction information directly from BIM. This paper investigates the impact of Total BIM on site work methods through four real-life case studies, site visits, workshops, seminars and semi-structured interviews. The findings indicated that Total BIM provided site workers with a more dynamic construction process where the mobile BIM-viewer software became a central communication and management platform. Key digital Total BIM features were investigated that site workers used to perform new work methods, including measuring, filtering, visualizing, communicating, checklists, and requests for information. By using Total BIM instead of static 2D drawings, site workers interacted dynamically with BIM on mobile devices, changing the process of how work was implemented on the construction site. The practical implications of these findings can be used to support the on-site implementation and strategy work of Total BIM. Furthermore, this paper contributes practical concrete examples of on-site Total BIM use and addresses issues commonly found in state-of-the-art BIM projects.