A framework of intra-organisational knowledge sharing practices in implementing BIM within the Malaysian construction industry

The Malaysian construction industry has been urged by the government to implement BIM to become a stable, developed, and modernised country by the year 2020. In the Malaysian context, research has shown that BIM implementation is relatively low and is still facing some challenges. Lack of understanding and knowledge remains a significant barrier to BIM adoption. Meanwhile, knowledge sharing (KS) is acknowledged as the essence of technological capability development to start the dissemination process, preventing the loss of knowledge and lessons learned, and also to increase operational efficiencies. The practice of knowledge sharing will enable learning development in implementing BIM. This will potentially help to avoid the same problems that other organisations have faced, hence speeding up a successful BIM implementation process. However, there seems to be little effort in developing a knowledge sharing framework for BIM implementation. Therefore, this study attempted to expand the literature and to support improvements in construction organisations by developing a framework of intra-organisational knowledge sharing practices for an effective implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the Malaysian construction industry. This study explored and identified the critical factors of knowledge sharing as the main components of the framework. Since BIM is relatively new within the Malaysian construction industry, a few steps were taken to identify a suitable organisation that has an understanding of BIM and fulfil the research scope. The first step was through a review of implementation cases in publications. The second was by a direct conversation with a gatekeeper who is in-charge of monitoring the development of BIM in Malaysia, and thirdly through preliminary interviews with thirteen (13) organisations identified from all the three steps taken. However, only nine (9) responded, and six (6) matched the scope of this study. This study uses multiple-case studies as a research strategy for the primary data collection through semi-structured interviews with nine (9) respondents across six construction organisations that have implemented BIM in Malaysia. Content analysis techniques were used to analyse data from each case study before it was cross-analysed to determine further results. Then, the findings were discussed and theoretically validated to produce a preliminary framework. Consequently, the final framework was presented after the preliminary framework was validated via peer interviews supported with a questionnaire survey. The framework outlines three elements (people, process, and technology), which consist of eight practices and 32 KS components according to their KS ranking in implementing BIM. Each of the practice describes the KS requirement that the organisation needs to develop to allow the success of knowledge sharing in implementing BIM. It highlights the need for organisations to focus their efforts on eight essential practices; Leadership and management support, Team characteristics and organisation, Individual attitudes and personality, Communication and collaboration, Policy, Operational, IT infrastructure and Appropriate tools. The framework could be used to guide the construction organisations to identify the capability of the organisation in determining the requirement of knowledge sharing practices in implementing BIM. This will improve the workflow and speed up the successful implementation process of BIM in Malaysia.