Implementation of BIM for Off-Site Manufacturing in Construction Industry

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a new developing technology and a modern approach that could achieve a specific position in construction in recent years due to its abilities and capabilities. Since, this technology and new approach is able to create a virtual model of building with details and all components, the authority of stakeholder’s initiative and creativity will incredibly increase and they will be able to predict the most important problems and limitations before implementation. Traditional or conventional construction is proven due to non-flexibility against different types of environment conditions, problems in terms of quality control of materials and consuming more energy will increase risks, time and cost in construction. Prefabrication or off-site construction is an offsite manufacturing process that takes place at a specialized facility in which various materials and building systems are joined to form a component or part of a larger final installation. The most important benefits of off-site construction in comparison with traditional methods is time and cost reduction and its abilities to increased quality. According to the young population of Iran and enormous demand for homeownership, the use of modern technologies in construction section is unavoidable in order to increase productivity and optimal use of resources. Due to the benefits of off-site construction from the sustainable development point of view, this method has high potential to response this demand. But the use of off-site construction could not find its proper position in Iranian construction industry due to some barriers and limitation. Integrating BIM and off-site process due to the capabilities of BIM to share information and increase communication among different parts of project before, in design phase and during construction has a high potential to overcome obstacles and solved them. Moreover, due to abilities of BIM approach to create a virtual model and existing potential of BIM tools to simulate and experiment various component testing in virtual environment, integration of these modern technologies can improve the benefits of construction. In this research in the first step as an initial objective, critical factors of off-sit construction barriers are measured. Then as the main objective by statistical methods, it is investigated at what extend building information modeling (BIM) can overcome on these critical off-site construction limitation in Iran construction industry. The results shows that BIM adoption and operation has high potential to overcome off-site construction limitation. In addition, by integrating BIM and modern construction, duration period of construction, cost and risks will be decreased. Keywords: Building Information Modeling (BIM), Off-Site Manufacturing (OSM), barriers of prefabrication, Iran construction industry