Investigating the Causes of Missing Field Detected Issues from BIM-Based Construction Coordination through Semistructured Interviews

Abstract

Although the use of building information modeling (BIM) and automatic clash detection has improved the construction coordination process in construction projects, the industry still suffers from on-site fixes of issues, which can cause construction delays and cost over-runs. Several research studies have investigated the causes of constructability issues or rework but have not focused on how the issues are missed at the construction coordination stage, which is a mitigation strategy that can minimize field detected issues. This research, via expert interviews and utilizing the grounded theory approach, determined the underlying causes of not capturing field-detected issues during the BIM-based construction coordination process. Missing model elements, not considering operability or maintainability, and inaccurate as-built model updates were the most common causes. The research findings can benefit industry practitioners by providing the causes and preventive measures that can enhance the ability to capture issues before they occur in the field. Moreover, this research also provides future researchers with the critical causes that need to be tackled to improve BIM-based construction coordination.