Changes in the BIM Service Provision of Top BIM Companies: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study

This paper presents the results of a five-year longitudinal study conducted to analyze the changes in the building information modeling (BIM) services provided by top contractors from 2011 to 2015. Many previous studies analyzed the trend of BIM adoption through questionnaires, case studies, or interviews, all methods that are subject to respondents’ perspectives. To objectively analyze the changes in BIM services throughout the years, the research team tracked the BIM services provided by top contractors, which were selected using the 2011 to 2015 Giants 300 reports. The BIM services that each company provided were collected in 2011, 2013, and 2015 from the company’s website, brochures, and/or reports about its BIM projects. The collected BIM services were regrouped using the BIM use classification suggested by Pennsylvania State University. The frequency of BIM services and the correlations between the BIM service types were analyzed. The results showed that the average number of BIM services provided by one company increased from 5.16 in 2011 to 10.91 in 2015. The top five BIM services provided by the top BIM companies include phase planning, 3D coordination, design reviews, cost estimation, and site utilization. While about 70% of the top BIM companies provided these services in 2011, these services were provided by most companies (approximately 85%) in 2015. It is expected that the results of this study will help the industry to overview trends in the BIM market and decide which technologies they need to adopt in order to keep pace with major BIM companies.