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The purpose of this paper is to study the interdependent boundary-spanning activities that characterise the level of permeability of knowledge, information flow and learning among construction supply chains involved in the delivery of building information modelling (BIM)-compliant construction projects. Construction projects are mobilised through a number of interdependent processes and multi-functional activities by different practitioners with myriad specialised skills. Many of the difficulties that manifest in construction projects can be attributed to the fragmented work activities and inter-disciplinary nature of project teams. This is nevertheless becoming ever more pertinent with the rise of technology deployment in construction organisations.

The study combined experts’ sampling interviews and a case study research method to help offer better insights into the kind of emerging multilevel boundary practices as influenced by the rapidly evolving construction technological solutions. The experts’ sampling helped inform better understanding by unravelling the key changes in contemporary boundary configurations and related boundary-spanning practices within technology-mediated construction project settings. The case study also helped to establish the manifestation of best practices for managing multilevel boundaries in BIM-enabled construction project organisations.

The study has revealed that different generic organisational BIM strategies as developed in specialised boundaries are reconfigured as appropriate at the project level to produce project-specific BIM execution plan (BXP). The outcome of project BXP is dependent on the project organisational teams that cooperate in creating new solutions and on conceding space for negotiations and compromises which conflicting interests at the project level can find to be both desirable and feasible. The implementation effort is therefore contingent on mutual translation in which different actors with different insights instigate their practice through negotiation and persuasion which eventually are reinforced by contractual agreements and obligations.

The paper has presented a novel and well-timed empirical insight into BIM-enabled project delivery and best practices that span multilevel boundaries of construction organisations.

The evolving roles of BIM and smart building technologies in the design and management of construction projects often present unexpected events and variabilities, which tend to erode professionals’ prior knowledge authority. The purpose of this paper is to explore how construction organisations can deploy knowledge and adapt to the requisite skills in order to make fitting responses to the ever-evolving technological and organisational transformations to address the prevailing construction challenges.

The paper opted for an abductive research approach that ensures back-and-forth iterative dialogue between the empirical data and an amalgam of the theoretical proposition towards new understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. A multiple case study method was adopted to collate the empirical data from three separate construction organisations as they transitioned into BIM compliant work processes.

The study has described new processes that not only mediate existing practices but focus on consistently resolving known tensions and contradictions between prior knowledge and the requirement of the changing work situation. The study also illustrates the cognitive synchronisation of the learning approaches within contemporary work organisations that align well with the merits and utilities entrenched within their niche technological choices.

Due to the chosen research methodology, it is acknowledged that future comparative studies using a much larger quantitative data sample to further elucidate the findings of this paper would be an interesting further step.

The study contributes to construction management literature by providing new insights into expansive learning environments capable of addressing cognitive contradictions and ambiguities inherent in the changing contemporary work patterns in the construction context as a consequence of BIM deployment.

The emergence of building information modelling (BIM) has led to the need for pre-qualification and selection of organisations capable of working within a BIM environment. Several criteria have been proposed for the assessment of an organisation’s BIM capability during the pre-qualification and selection phase of projects. However, no studies have sought to empirically establish whether organisations selected on the basis of such criteria have actually been the most successful at delivering BIM on projects. The purpose of this paper is to address the aforementioned gap through a comparison of predicted BIM capability and post-selection performance.

BIM capability of firms in a case study was predicted using 28 BIM pre-qualification and selection criteria, prioritised based on their perceived contribution to BIM delivery success from a survey of practitioners on BIM-enabled projects. The comparison of predicted BIM capability and post-selection performance was, on the other hand, achieved through the application of the Technique to Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution and fuzzy sets theory (Fuzzy-TOPSIS).

Findings underscore the reliability of the 28 BIM pre-qualification and selection criteria as well as the priority weightings proposed for their use in predicting BIM capability and likelihood of performance. The findings have highlighted the importance of criteria related as previous BIM use experience as well as information processing maturity as critical indicators of the capability of organisations, particularly design firms.

Overall, the findings highlight the need for prioritisation of BIM pre-qualification and selection criteria on the basis of their actual contribution to delivery success from post-selection evaluation of performance.

In today's digital and post-pandemic era, construction teams can span their boundary to obtain important resources and support in computer-mediated ways. However, the benefits of computer-mediated team boundary spanning (TBS) are mostly assumed. Empirical evidence for these benefits is in lack. Thus, this study attempts to investigate the influence of computer-mediated (instant messaging in this study) TBS on construction project performance and the underlying mechanism.

From the multiteam system (MTS) perspective, this study employs the input-process-outcome (IPO) framework and coordination theory to explore the influence of instant messaging-based team boundary spanning (IMTBS) on construction project coordination processes and project performance. A theoretical model is built and validated with a survey involving 206 construction projects.

Results show that IMTBS positively affects knowledge integration and project coordination, but negatively affects project commitment. The positive link between IMTBS and project performance is attributable to knowledge integration and project coordination. Further, project commitment is also found to negatively mediate the relationship between IMTBS and construction project performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to empirically investigate the influence of TBS on construction project performance. As such, this study contributes to the literature on TBS in the construction field. In addition, the findings of this study unveil the double-edged characteristic of IMTBS, which should attract managers' attention. This also indicates that the form of TBS is a significant determinant of its effectiveness, which should attract scholars' attention in the future.

Megaprojects present an intricated pattern of leadership activities, which evolve over their planning and delivery and comprises several stakeholders. A framework is useful to navigate this complexity; it allows to identify and cluster the key elements. This paper aims to introduce a novel framework based on boundary spanners to describe the structural pattern of shared leadership in megaprojects.

A systematic literature review about boundary spanning and shared leadership is used to identify and cluster the key elements of shared leadership in megaprojects. The systematic literature review provides a rich theoretical background to develop the novel shared leadership framework based on boundary spanners.

There are three key dimensions characterizing shared leadership topology in megaprojects: stakeholders, boundary spanning leadership roles and project phases. The novel framework shows how project leadership dynamically transfers among different stakeholders, showing the importance of shared leadership as a leadership paradigm in megaprojects.

The novel framework epitomizes shared leadership in megaprojects by exploring its antecedents with social network metrics. This paper stresses that shared leadership is the envisaged form of leadership in megaprojects. By modeling complex project leadership in a simple, yet effective way, the framework fosters critical thinking for future research. The modeling introduced by this framework would also benefit practitioners in charge of megaprojects.

The paper moves the project leadership research to the network-level by taking boundary spanners as shared leadership roles in megaprojects. It shows how shared leadership is a valuable management tool for planning and delivery megaprojects.

Critics of claims about building information modeling’s (BIM’s) capability to revolutionize construction industry practices describe it as overhyped, fallacious and therefore suggest that there is need for a more critical examination of its change impacts. Others have posited that the changes BIM induces are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In this vein, the purpose of this paper was to undertake a careful analysis of the nature of such changes to distil actual changes that happened, and the type of agency that brings such changes about.

Drawing from appropriate qualitative research strategies, data was collected through key informant interviews from consulting organizations in South Africa that have implemented BIM within their organizations and on projects.

Changes in organizations’ work practices were evident in their workflows, formal/informal methods of interaction, norms, leadership and authority structures, remuneration and the way work was conceived or conceptualized. Furthermore, changes in organizational work practices do not solely occur through the direct agency of the BIM tool’s implementation. Instead, BIM-induced change occurs by delegated, conditional and needs-based agency – which are not mutually exclusive.

The nature of changes in professional work practices could be misconstrued as being solely because of the actions of agents who actively participate in implementing BIM. The discussion in the literature has, therefore, been advanced from general to specific theoretical understandings of BIM-induced change, which emphasize the need for construction stakeholders to actively participate in developing the innovations that drive change in the industry rather than hand the power to drive change to BIM authoring and management application developers who have less stake in the industry.

The popularity of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has improved tremendously in recent years. The business sense it makes to construction small to medium‐sized (SME) organizations has also become vitally important, especially when the deliverables of BIM potentials are becoming more explicit than they were several years ago. Moreover, there is adequate evidence to suggest that an early adoption of BIM by construction SME organizations could mean marked sustainable business advantage to them. The purpose of this paper is to initiate a long‐term study on how BIM triggers market improvements in the Australian construction industry, to establish the specific impact of these on construction industry's contribution to Australian economy, also to develop a simple model on the cost of implementing BIM in a typical construction SME.

This research relies on evidence from literature to identify different operational models of construction organizations, namely; matrix, divisional, functional and networked business models. A definite approach was taken to articulate some contributory concepts and rationales which drive organizational response to technological changes across the identified four categories of organization structure models. Focus group discussion was the primary research method for this study, while additional data were collected from public sources. Respondents and data were sourced from two firms selected from each type of organization model. In the end, 24 industry practitioners from a range of Australian construction SME businesses that provide software and technical support services, consultancy and contracting services took part in the study.

Analysis of 32 sample cases revealed that BIM implementation costs were mostly defined by a range of cost variables, including software acquisition and technical support, hardware, training, services and implementation contingencies. On the average, software costs accounted for about 55 percent of total implementation costs. This particular cost descriptor was about five to seven times more than the cost of hardware (depending on the level of sophistication of operations, expected implementation outcomes and whether new hardware were used or existing installation were upgraded with BIM compliant drivers). The study also found that training cost was a third of software costs, while the average total cost of services, recruitment and contingencies, all added together, was about 5 percent of total implementation costs. In the end, a linear model was developed to predict the cost of BIM implementation in construction SMEs.

A preliminary version of this study has been presented in the 2010 edition of the International Conference on Information Technology in Construction (CIB W078). As a study in a new direction, it focuses on specific organization models and their unique responses to drivers of change. While other studies have looked into macro implementation of BIM, mostly without considering the peculiarity and dynamics of organization structure, this study has focused on construction SME businesses offering a wide range of services.

Industry uptake of digital modeling is improving. Recent evidence suggests building information modeling (BIM) is the commercial reality of today’s construction education, and the way of the future that has truly begun. Amongst the significance of this is BIM’s potential to revolutionize the industry. The purpose of this paper is to use the learning experiences of undergraduate students in two construction management subjects involving quantity measurement and cost estimation to explore students’ motivation toward BIM education. In particular, the study investigates decision factors underlying students’ selection of software for information management in a modeling environment.

A total of 674 undergraduate students from the same institution were surveyed, out of which 153 responses were retrieved. The data provide insights into decisions taken by students while metamorphosing traditional processes into BIM-driven outcomes, in the form of commercial estimates of a real life project reported through a bill of quantities. Some 29 decision factors were analyzed. These include prior training, flair for creativity, ease of use, economic reasons, learning outcomes, on-going technical support and support infrastructure. Reductionist methods involving factor analysis and Cronbach’s α reliability estimate procedures were used to investigate the most important decision factors from amongst the decision factors analyzed.

Results show all the 29 decision factors are statistically significant. Access to on-going support, the mandatory requirement to use a particular tool to complete an assessment task and the requirement to use the tool for job duties are the most significant decision factors. Vendors’ persuasion and the capability of the tool to achieve better outcomes than others are least significant. Statistical correlations between the decision factors were obtained. They all suggest near-absolute correlations.

The practical implications of these findings are vital. They help to unravel factors that promote students’ interest in BIM education, and contribute toward the development of software selection models that are relevant to professionals and incipient businesses.

Future studies on decision analysis can be built on the findings also. In particular, the decision factors help in developing creative cognitive solutions to BIM adoption issues. They also help on the challenge posed by the constraints of knowledge diffusion within and across project teams, and in designing tools that meet the requirements of non-design disciplines who also play vital roles in the BIM project environment.

Although there has been a surge in the adoption of building information modelling (BIM) in the construction industry, the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still struggling and perceive its adoption as risky. The SMEs in developing economies are especially on the disadvantaged side of the digital divide. Extant studies have focused on large firms and there are scanty studies on the influence of the external environments on BIM adoption in SMEs. Thus, this study espouses institutional theory (INT) to examine the influence of coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures on BIM awareness and adoption in SMEs.

A quantitative approach was employed, and data were collected from the Nigerian construction SMEs via an empirical questionnaire survey using a sequential stratified and convenient sampling method. Hypothesized relationships between the coercive, mimetic, and normative pressure and BIM in SMEs were empirically tested using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique and the model was validated with the “PLSpredict” procedure.

The results revealed that coercive and mimetic pressures significantly influence BIM adoption in SMEs while normative pressures have the strongest influence on BIM in SMEs. Also, BIM awareness is an important predictor of BIM adoption. The findings also shed light on the influence of firmographics on BIM awareness and adoption in Nigerian SMEs.

The study empirically validates the applicability of INT and highlights that BIM adoption is not only influenced by internal responses to the need for efficiency but also by external pressures. It implies a clear need for intentional isomorphic pressures in driving BIM adoption in SMEs. The study employs the INT to explain a phenomenon that has not been theoretically explored in the context of SMEs in developing economies. Lastly, the study provided valuable insights into driving BIM adoption, together with the effective practical implications for implementation and potential research areas for further studies.

Despite the SMEs representing a large percentage of firms in the construction industry, there has been an under-representation of SMEs’ perspective in BIM research studies. This paper aims to systematically review the few extant studies with a view of synthesizing the findings.

Hermeneutic philosophy using the interpretivist epistemology approach with a touch of metasynthesis was adopted to critically review and analyse extant studies published over the last decade.

The findings revealed a scarcity of BIM studies in SMEs, the status of adoption, identified barriers, benefits and drivers. A conceptual model was then developed based on the literature review and theoretical lenses of innovation diffusion model, technology–organization–environment framework and institutional theory. The paper presents pertinent propositions to drive BIM in the SMEs.

This paper holistically reviews extant BIM studies from the perspective of SMEs that are the backbone of the construction industry. It synthesizes extant studies and sets scenes for further studies.