Exploring the rate of adoption and implementation depth of building information modeling (BIM): A case of Kuwait

The Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry in the State of Kuwait has witnessed a decline in efficiency with most projects going above budget and past project deadlines. Building Information Modeling (BIM) creates a collaborative common-data working environment between various stakeholders leading to improved productivity and efficiency while also minimizing technical challenges, and reducing design errors. Moreover, adding the concept of time to the model (4D BIM) for the purposes of planning and scheduling further optimizes inter-disciplinary collaboration. The first phase of this research aims to evaluate current BIM adoption rates and implementation depth in Kuwait through a survey distributed to organizations in the Union of Kuwait Engineering Offices and Consultant Houses. The results indicated that the rate of BIM adoption, represented by whether or not organizations have used BIM in previous/current projects is relatively high. Implementation depth, represented by the percentage of projects for which BIM is being used, is concluded to be low. In terms of willingness to adopt BIM, most organizations use and are considering using BIM as a visualization tool. The second phase aims to examine the applicability of generating predefined process templates for Tract Houses in the northwest Sulibikhat area constructed by the Public Authority of Housing Welfare (PAHW) used for 4D BIM. The Process Pattern Recognition approach is applied to a BIM-based construction schedule where the schedule is extracted, decomposed, processed, and filtered. Relevant and potentially relevant processes are identified and verified leading to defined process templates. This research contributes to the AEC industry by aiding in transitioning from current Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) practices to BIM technology.