A proposed BIM business value model

The business value of IT investments has long engaged researchers in fields of information systems (IS) and information technology (IT). Only in recent years has the business value of IT investments received attention in a construction industry context. Particularly, research on the business value of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has emerged in research during the last decade. However, much of the studies do not account for how organizational and business factors influence the value creation process. The research also tends to emphasize what the economic effects of BIM are rather than exploring how these values are created and under what organizational conditions. Hence, the aim is to explore how business value of BIM can be developed in an organizational and business process context. Building on models of IT business value creation from the IT/IS research field, together with findings from interviews on the perceived economic outcomes of BIM, a tentative BIM Business Value Model is proposed that accounts for organizational and business process factors. The model is then used to analyse and suggest what organizational and business related activities that need further attention from research in order to enable BIM business value creation. The findings indicate that among these activities are managing stakeholder requirements, incentives for BIM use, joint inter-organizational activities with partners and delivery of key information to operations and maintenance. A prerequisite for value creation with BIM is however to be able to manage organizational change if BIM is to have a potential impact on performance.