A Survey on Application of Building Information Modelling in Road Construction

ABSTRACT: Project management success is mainly evaluated by assessing the capability of managing time, cost, quality and nowadays, health and safety. Time and cost overruns can arise by various reasons in different projects especially roads and highways. These project types can also benefit from using Building Information Modelling (BIM) from the inception till the operation. Although the implication of BIM in building industry has been noticed theoretically and practically, its application in road and highway design and construction seems to be comparatively slower than building design and construction especially in developing countries such as Iran. Moreover, construction firms are still reluctant to admit changes even by facing delay and cost escalation in almost 100% of their roadway projects. To understand better about the deviation in project constraints, a questionnaire was administered among 20 construction firms and they were asked to rate the given causes of delay, cost overrun and quality deviation in road projects and also to evaluate BIM efficiency in preventing the causes considering the basic definitions. Furthermore, a case project was studied to assess the reliability of findings and to determine how BIM can be applied to road and highway design and construction. As the case study implied, by using Navisworks Manage clash detection feature, the change orders in some sections would have not probably happened which would have resulted in a cost reduction of approximately equal to 1.8% of the total project cost. Considering the project finishing date, case study showed a 12% more accuracy in time estimations with BIM. Keywords: Project Management, Road and Highway Construction, Building Information Modelling. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………