Implementation Framework for BIM Adoption and Project Management in Public Organizations

The arrival of Building Information Modelling (BIM) platforms to the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) markets and companies has led to a significant increase in efficiency in this economy sector. However, many AEC companies try to implement BIM as a normal or incremental change or improvement in technology rather than as a technological paradigm shift that radically affects most organizational processes, which may hinder a successful adoption of BIM with a deployment of its full potential. This paper aims to present a basic BIM framework amenable to ensure a successful BIM adoption in public organizations, particularly adapted to the Brazilian federal government. Based on a literature review, we propose to split the factors into three main groups: project development procedures, model development procedures and public governance policies. Some processes were studied in order to infer which of them is necessary for a successful BIM adoption. A BIM implementation is expected to be a success only if all main groups of factors are well defined and the established goals for each of them are reached. We also describe results of two concept proofs related to actual cases of BIM processes implementation, with extensive changes in product and governance management processes. Main results show that any BIM adoption should consider the close relation among model management, product management and governance management groups. All these groups should be contextualized in the environment of any public organization.