BIM awareness, knowledge, and implementation within a multi-disciplinary design consultancy in Scotland

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a relatively new concept in the UK construction industry. Born in recent years, and mandated by the Scottish Government in 2017, this concept has become an extremely relevant topic and the infrastructure and the government industry is still coming to grips with its utilisation, especially with the initiative for all centrally-funded projects to utilise BIM as a design tool. The aim of this paper is to investigate the levels of awareness, knowledge and implementation of BIM within the construction industry in Scotland in order to benchmark against the predicted and desired levels of maturity at UK level. To achieve this aim, we surveyed a broad
spectrum of construction professionals from Scotland using structured cross-sectional questionnaire surveys and semi-structured personal interviews. The results of the survey show that despite the relatively high level of awareness, the knowledge of BIM processes and methodologies is lagging behind the expected and predicted levels. The implementation of BIM within a major multidisciplinary
consultancy was shown to be subject to a number of barriers apparent at UK level. Respondents identified education, advertisement and leadership from the Scottish Government as the areas necessitating enhancement. Additionally, the professional bodies, academic institutions and the major industry enterprises were identified as leaders and drivers for the future of BIM. The lessons
learned from this survey in Scotland can be used in double loop learning for comparable countries in the world, but also as a baseline to benchmark future BIM developments in the construction industry in the UK.