Assessing BIM Adoption towards Reliability in QS Cost Estimates

Abstract

BIM technology has been evolving around the world in recent years. As in Malaysia, the country has initiated BIM in its current Construction Industry Transformation Programme (CITP) 2016-2020. One of the CITP agenda is to encourage BIM usage to assist the construction players in improving their current practices towards better productivity, hence better sustainability within the construction industry. In quantity surveying field, the technology potentially helps the Quantity Surveyors to accelerate the process of taking-off building quantities, subsequently establishing more reliable and sustainable cost estimates. Although BIM is claimed to upgrade the conventional methods of the measurement tasks, there are still some limitations of BIM innovation, with previous studies lacking explanation in identifying those issues. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of using BIM to aid Malaysian Quantity Surveyors primarily in cost estimating towards composing sustainability elements in the construction industry. To achieve this, a series of focus group discussions were conducted amongst BIM and non-BIM users. Through content analysis, it resulted that the capabilities of estimators in occupying BIM is critical to accomplish the sustainable benefits of the technology. It engages skills in both technology usage and traditional methods of measurement to achieve holistic knowledge of building construction. Thus, it enhances the performance of the estimators to likely generate reliability and sustainability in their cost estimates. This study contributes towards better understanding of cost estimating incorporating BIM and sustainability settings in quantity surveying practice.