A Research Review on Building Information Modeling in Construction―An Area Ripe for IS Research
Original version
Merschbrock, C., & Munkvold, B.E. (2012). A Research Review on Building Information Modeling in Construction―An Area Ripe for IS Research. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 31(1), 10.Abstract
This article presents a review of the research on Building Information Modeling (BIM) in construction, with the aim of
identifying areas in this domain where IS research can contribute. The concept of BIM comprises an infrastructure of
IT tools supporting collaborative and integrated design, assembly, and operation of buildings. This integrated
construction approach, with all stakeholders editing or retrieving information from commonly shared models, requires
major changes to well-established processes, organizational roles, contractual practices, and collaborative
arrangements in the construction industry. Through a review of 264 research articles on BIM, we found that this
research spans a wide area of technological and organizational topics, of which many have a clear resonance to
focal areas in IS research. Our analysis shows that IS, to some extent, serves as a reference discipline and that
theories used in IS research are also informing contemporary BIM research. The following areas in need of further
IS research were identified: studies on the relationship between BIM’s functional affordance and human agency,
adoption and use of BIM for inter-organizational collaboration, the influence of organizational culture on BIM
practices, the capabilities of BIM for transforming industry practice, and identifying the business value of BIM.
Considering that a well-established knowledge base in IS research can be drawn upon for studying these issues,
combined with the exciting potential of BIM for transforming a major industry such as building construction, we
conclude that BIM is an area ripe for IS research.
Description
Published version of article of an article in the journal: Communications of the Association for Information Systems. Also available from the publisher : http://http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol31/iss1/10/