BIM Implementation and Organisational Change: A Case Study of a Large Swedish Public Client

One of the current trends in the construction industry's effort to increase performance is to implement Building Information Modelling (BIM). Recent research suggests that changes to the work practices and business processes must accompany the implementation process if the desired goals and expectations of implementing IT are to be met. However, there is still limited knowledge on what types of change are required in an organisation as a whole in relation to BIM implementation. The purpose of this study is to explore how a large public client is initiating BIM implementation in their organisation. The main focus is to investigate what types of changes are being proposed to the work practices and processes in relation to BIM implementation. This paper studies the BIM initiation project at a large Swedish public infrastructure client. It is based on a case study involving both interviews and active participation. The findings indicate that the BIM initiation project proposes changes to the routines for how projects are initiated and conducted by introducing the concept of BIM in guiding documents. Yet, how these changes will influence the actual work practices and process is unclear. From these results, it can be argued that the organisation as such is not yet certain of how the implementation of BIM should and will influence the organisation. Rather, the initiation of BIM at the public client is a learning process about BIM and how it can improve productivity in the organisation.