Paper info

The use and adoption of Building Information Modelling in Sweden

Åse Linné

The paper was published at the 32nd IMP-conference in Poznan, Poland in 2016.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is defined as a software tool used to handle the construction process through design and planning, production along with operations and maintenance. BIM has been used as a new management tool in the construction industry during the last decade. There are however little research on investigating the use and adoption of BIM as a tool on a country level, instead main research on BIM focus on the technical aspects of BIM along with discussing how BIM is used in individual projects and within single organizations. This paper aims to provide a picture of the status of the use and adoption of BIM in Sweden. Through an in-depth interview study with main actor groups in the construction industry (technical engineering companies, architects, construction companies, clients/project owners) we find that basic BIM knowledge exists among construction actors and BIM is especially adopted in the design and planning phase, while BIM is less used in production and in operations. Higher level BIM is however limited to a few ‘extreme’ projects. The adoption of BIM is mainly driven by technical engineering and construction companies, while architects and clients are lagging behind adopting BIM.