Study On Building Information Modelling Body Of Knowledge (BIMBOK): A Knowledge Map Approach

Building Information Modelling(BIM) is an emerging knowledge field in modern construction management discipline. It also leads the revolution from the project practice to management principle. However, how could the immature BIM in research and application serve the construction practice and create more values to construction industry? An ideal Body of Knowledge(BOK) may be a good guidance to industry practice and research.This study firstly gives a detail review on the revolution of BIM and the structure of BIM to determine using the knowledge map to analyze the basic elements of BIMBOK. After that, the Citespace was selected as the tool to draw the knowledge map.Secondly, this study selected 444 documentary data from Web of Science(Wo S) core database and the data were analyzed via co-author, co-citation, key words co-occurrence, cluster and bibliographic coupling to find the research subject, knowledge domain, knowledge hotspot and knowledge topic. From drawing and analyzing knowledge map of research subject including author, institute and country, we could find the main research topic in different teams which directed by Eastman CM, Wang XY, Burcu Akinci, Mani Golparvar-Fard, Love PED, Kamat VR; The knowledge domain including enginering, computer science, construction & building technology, environment science, and education were identified to give a backgound support to BOK; The knowledge hotspot and knowledge topic also have been analyzed and provide numerous basic knowledge elements and four subsystems(Theory /Culture /Management /Technology) for BIMBOK; The knowledge trends analysis could enhance the predictive and sustainable ability for BIMBOK. After content analysis of classic and key literatures,the BIMBOK was preliminarily established with 4 subsystems and 50 knowledge items.Finally, this study uses the Delphi Method to evaluate the BIMBOK and improve the BIMBOK based on the comments from the BIM experts. The final BIMBOK was firmed with 4 subsystems and 40 knowledge items.