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Introduction
Construction project management is a core "traditional" field of the project management (PM) discipline so lessons learned from this paper may be of wider benefit to the PM community.
Current problems with the management of design and construction quality and efficiencies are clear calls for action to improve an industry that remains behind any other in its attempt to become more competitive and provide a better service to clients and society as a whole - to reduce disputes and to share risks and move the industry forward into the 21st century. A well known finding by the [13] NIST (2004) study states that over US$15.8 billion is lost every year due to the lack of data interoperability in the management of capital facilities in the US alone, while a more recent response is the mandate of the General Services Administration (GSA) to require new building documentation be prepared in a building information modelling (BIM) technological software.
The aim of the paper is to report on findings on business drivers for BIM and to provoke wider debate on the speed of adoption by design and construction management practices. The paper draws upon five case studies originally set to demystify myths surrounding "Business Drivers for BIM" ([3] Aranda-Mena et al. , 2008). [10] Froese et al. (2008) provides a detailed description of the structured study, data analysis and alignment with the Val IT business framework ([12] ITGI, 2006). On the other hand, [8] Crawford et al. (2008) presents a concise summary of business drivers for BIM. Both papers were intended to disseminate findings and value propositions to property owners, operators, contractors and consultants. This paper focuses on specific findings to managing consulting practices in architecture and engineering.
Taking the premise that construction project management practices cannot afford not to invest in BIM technologies this paper was set to investigate business drivers for BIM. The paper is based on a larger investigation sponsored by the CRC for Construction Innovation representing a number of private and public sector architectural and construction organisations (www.crcci.info). The investigation was carried out during 2007 by researchers from RMIT University, Melbourne and QUT University, Brisbane, whereby the overall investigation was set as a project to identify factual evidence on business drivers for...