Investigating the Role of Lean Practices in Enabling BIM Adoption: Evidence from Two Indian Cases

Abstract

Construction projects continue to be plagued by cost and time overruns, primarily due to poor information-sharing between project participants. Building information modeling (BIM) has emerged as a digital platform through which project teams can share information better and improve project performance. However, many barriers to BIM adoption exist. The successful alignment of BIM technology with work processes as well as willingness to coordinate among project participants are considered most critical for successful BIM adoption. Lean construction practices address the issue of improving coordination within a project team and provide some recipes for how enhanced coordination can be brought about. While the use of BIM as a mediating intervention to enable effective lean practice implementation as an outcome has been documented, the use of lean practices as mediators for achieving enhanced levels of BIM use has not been adequately studied. This paper attempts to address this gap and understand if and how lean practices can be used to enable BIM adoption. Using an ethnographic action research methodology, two metro rail station projects are studied in India, a country where cost and time overruns in many sectors are much higher than the global average. On one project, building information models were built and an attempt was made to use these models for enhanced decision making. On the second project, the last planner system was implemented for 6 months, after which BIM was introduced on the project. The extent to which BIM was used for effective decision making leading to accurate planning and timely completion of activities was measured. On the first project, BIM was hardly used for decision making. On the second project, lean practices created a culture of coordination that incentivized the planning team to specify the kinds of building information models that were to be built, which would align with challenges faced on site. These models were subsequently debated upon collectively and were used for decision making with regards to planning and sequencing, suggesting enhanced BIM adoption. It is argued that lean practices can enable BIM adoption and the two reinforce each other. This paper contributes to knowledge on BIM adoption by showing how lean practices reduce coordination-related issues within the project organization, paving the way for BIM adoption. Building information modeling in conjunction with lean practices can therefore be used on construction projects to improve project performance.