Study On The Cost And Benefit Of BIM Application Of Chinese Construction Enterprise

By the third quarter of 2019,1,540 construction projects in China have applied Building Information Modelling(BIM),with an increase of 18.01% with comparison to the same period of 2018.The number of construction projects applying BIM in China continues to increase in recent years,but the application scope is still relatively small compared with the huge construction investment in China.By analyzing the costs and benefits of BIM application,the barriers can be identified in the Chinese construction industry,while few research has been conducted in this area.Based on comprehensive literature review,this paper takes construction enterprise as the research object through questionnaire survey and case analysis methods,and sets the following objectives:(1)identifying the critical cost factors of applying BIM for construction enterprise in China;(2)identifying the critical benefit indicators of applying BIM for construction enterprise in China;(3)exploring the benefit level of applying BIM for construction enterprise in China;(4)proposing measures to improve the application of BIM benefits for construction enterprise in China.The paper is divided into five sections.The first section summarizes the Chinese and international research status in the area of BIM application cost and benefit,and defines the main research content and purpose of this paper.The second section introduces the BIM definition and the theory of cost and benefit.The third section identifies the cost and benefit indicators of applying BIM in construction enterprise through literature review.The fourth section conducts questionnaire survey and data analysis to determine the critical cost and benefit indicators of applying BIM in construction enterprise.The fifth section is the empirical analysis on a case construction project,exploring the actual benefit level of applying BIM in China,and putting forward suggestions to improve the benefit of applying BIM in Chinese construction enterprises.The sixth section summarizes the main conclusions and suggests future research directions of this paper.In this research,57 questionnaires were actually obtained,of which 37 were valid,with a response rate of 64.91%.Based on the results of literature review,questionnaire survey and case study,the main findings are as the following:(1)Through extensive literature review on BIM application cost,two types of cost elements were identified(i.e.direct cost and indirect cost),with a total of 9 sub-category cost elements.Direct benefit and indirect benefit were identified,with a total of 21sub-category benefit indicators.(2)Through data analysis of questionnaire survey results,the relative importance of the cost and benefit indicators were determined.Among them,the personnel salary(0.707),hardware cost for the operation of BIM software(0.680)and software cost(0.647)are the critical cost elements of BIM application.Improving the quality of drawings(0.847),reducing the number of changes(0.847),reducing the rework of projects(0.820)are the critical benefit indicators of applying BIM for construction enterprise.(3)According to the results of case study,it was found that the return on investment of applying BIM in construction project is 218.42%,and the application benefits of BIM mainly includes: 3.52% of cost saving,53.3% of change reduction and 14.05% of project duration savings.According to the research findings of this paper,the cost and benefit indicators of BIM application in construction enterprise were identified,and the suggestions applying BIM were put forward.These results can provide a reference for Chinese construction enterprise to apply BIM and conduct cost and benefit analysis to achieve more benefits in the practice.