Knowledge acquisition to address skills challenges in UK construction industry

The successful implementation of new technologies plays a major role in the economic growth of the country. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is considered to be one of the most recent technologies introduced within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. However people who are involved in BIM based construction projects are struggling to achieve their project outcomes due to not having enough knowledge and skills to work with this new technology. The main aim of the paper is to explore how knowledge can be distributed among the project participants to acquire the appropriate knowledge and skills during the implementation of new technologies. Connectivism theory has been adopted in this study to understand the distribution of knowledge and the learning process in the BIM construction projects. Following that, data was obtained through conducting the interviews with the professionals who have used BIM in their construction projects. The collected data focused on the knowledge acquisition in the implementation of BIM technology. In addition the learning process within BIM construction projects was also looked in terms of achieving the knowledge and appropriate skills which is essential to support the various stakeholders to efficiently use BIM technology.