BIM and its impact upon project success outcomes from a Facilities Management perspective

The uptake of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been increasing, but some of its promoted potential benefits have been slow to materialise. In particular, claims that BIM will revolutionise facilities management (FM) creating efficiencies in the whole-life of building operations have yet to be achieved on a wide scale, certainly in comparison to tangible progress made for the prior design and construction phases. To attempt to unravel the factors at play in the adoption of BIM during the operational phase, and in particular, understand if adoption by facilities managers (FMs) is lagging behind other disciplines, this study aims to understand if current BIM processes can ease the challenges in this area faced by facilities management project stakeholders. To do this, success from a facilities management viewpoint is considered and barriers to facilities management success are explored, with focused BIM use proposed as a solution to these barriers. Qualitative research was undertaken, using semi structured interviews to collect data from a non-probability sample of 7 project- and facilities- management practitioners. Key results from this study show that the main barrier to BIM adoption by facilities managers is software interoperability, with reports that facilities management systems are unable to easily import BIM data produced during the design and construction stages. Additionally, facilities managers were not treated as salient stakeholders by Project Managers, further negatively affecting facilities management project success outcomes. A µresistance to change was identified as another barrier, as facilities managers were sceptical of the ability of current BIMenabled systems promoted as being FM compatible to be able to replicate their existing Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM) legacy software and its user required capabilities. The results of this study highlight that more work is needed to ensure that BIM benefits the end user, as there was no reported use of BIM data for dedicated facilities management purposes. Further investigation into the challenges of interoperability could add significant value to this developing research area.