BIM technology acceptance among reinforcement workers - the case of Oslo airport's terminal 2
Journal article, Peer reviewed
© 2016 the author. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 3.0 unported (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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https://hdl.handle.net/10642/3246Utgivelsesdato
2016-03-01Metadata
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Merschbrock, C., & Nordahl-Rolfsen, C. (2016). BIM Technology acceptance among reinforcement workers–The case of Oslo Airport’s terminal 2. Journal of Information Technology in Construction, 21(1). http://www.itcon.org/2016/1Sammendrag
Today’s design teams deliver engineering models sophisticated enough to serve as blueprints for
production and construction work. However, issues of adoption persist for the on-site use of building information
modelling (BIM). It is known how delivery and placement of material such as reinforcing bars influences the
productivity of the overall construction process. This article presents an early pilot case of BIM implementation
for facilitating on-site placement of reinforcing bars. No traditional shop drawings were used throughout the
fabrication and placement of the reinforcing bars. The research question asked is: Will BIM technology be
accepted or rejected by concrete reinforcement ironworkers in carrying out their work? This question was
considered worthwhile since whether or not individuals accept or resist using a new technology depends on
whether they perceive it as beneficial or detrimental for doing their jobs. The technology acceptance model was
used to structure the inquiry in this article. Data were collected based on a series of semi-structured interviews
with reinforcement workers in Oslo’s new airport terminal T2 project. The workers used a highly sophisticated
virtual model indicating the position, type and dimension of reinforcement loops and bars. Findings are that even
less IT-literate workers perceived the virtual models to provide them with a large relative advantage over paper
workshop drawings. Thus, BIM systems, handheld devices, and apps can be considered sophisticated enough for
replacing workshop drawings. A prerequisite is careful preparation work by structural and site engineers. Several
issues hindering a more wide spread adoption could be identified: (1) information technology capability of
structural engineers; (2) appropriate contracts, and (3) additional workload incurred by structural and site
engineers. Our work indicates that substantial building process productivity improvements are possible when BIM
adoption in reinforcing bar placement is introduced. However, there are costs which may outweigh some of the
advantages. It was beyond the scope of our study to establish the added value of BIM for the reinforcement and
the overall construction process.