SUPPORTING BIM ADOPTION AND IMPLEMENTATION - CASE NEW ZEALAND

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SUPPORTING BIM ADOPTION AND IMPLEMENTATION –
CASE NEW ZEALAND
T. Puolitaival1
R. Amor2
A. GhaffarianHoseini3
K. S. Park4
1 Building Construction and Services Practice Pathway Group, Unitec Institute of Technology,
Auckland, New Zealand
2 Department of Computer Science, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
3 Department of Built Environment Engineering, School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical
Sciences, Auckland University of Technology. Auckland, New Zealand
4 School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand
There is a significant list of reported reasons for why the construction industry is not adopting
Building Information Modelling (BIM), or delaying the decision to use BIM. The most common
reasons, regardless of the global location, have been ‘limited demand for BIM from clients or
from other companies on projects’, ‘lack of standardised tools and protocols’, and ‘lack of
expertise and insufficient training’. These barriers to adoption are also evident in New Zealand
(NZ) context. This case study discusses the support mechanisms in place in NZ for wider BIM
adoption and implementation. To address the barriers in New Zealand National Technical
Standards Committee (NTSC) was established in 2012, BIM Acceleration Committee (BAC)
and National BIM Education Working Group (NBEWG) in 2014. Members of the first two
committees represent both industry and government. The National BIM Education Working
Group has representatives from all tertiary institutes who have interest in BIM and wish to
include it as part of their programmes. National Technical Standards Committee is overseeing
the development of open industry standards for building and location data. BAC’s main role is
to increase the use of BIM in New Zealand by generating demand for BIM through client
education and by enabling the industry. This is being done through training, networks and
communication, and BIM guidelines and BIM project examples. NBEWG promotes integration
of BIM into all architectural, engineering and construction programmes in New Zealand by
providing national curriculum guidelines and guidance in adopting BIM curriculum. All three
groups work in close collaboration, supporting each other and sharing resources to guarantee
consistency of the BIM message from government to industry to education. An example of
collaboration is evidenced by common training packages being prepared by a group of people
from industry and tertiary education.
Keywords: [BIM, BIM Industry Standards, BIM Education, BIM Training, New Zealand].
Introduction
Benefits of BIM as well as obstacles are widely known. Lack of standards, lack of
demand from clients, interoperability, resistance to change current practices and lack
of knowledge and skills, and training are recognized widely as the main barriers for
BIM adoption and implementation (Bernstein and Pittman, 2004; Newton and
Chileshe, 2012; Park and Kim (2014). Many countries such as Australia, Finland, New
Zealand (NZ), Singapore, and United Kingdom (UK) have developed BIM adoption
and implementation strategies in order to overcome these obstacles. The strategies in
each country are discussed briefly to compare them with the approach that NZ has
adopted especially when it comes to training and education. In NZ National Technical

Standards Committee (NTSC) was established 2012, BIM Acceleration Committee
(BAC) and National BIM Education Working Group (NBEWG) in 2014 to create
wider BIM awareness and encourage BIM adoption and implementation.
Methodology
The research method draws on situational context in Australia, Finland, Singapore,
UK and in NZ when it comes to BIM adoption and national support mechanisms to
increase BIM awareness, adoption and implementation. NZ approach is examined in
depth and compared with the approaches that other countries have taken. NZ data has
been collected through document analysis by examining minutes of meetings,
committee reports, terms of reference and websites of different parties and also
through participation in meetings and workshops. It can be said that the research also
has some features of action research. The authors are all involved in the National BIM
Education Working Group, one is a member of the BIM Acceleration Committee and
National Technical Standards Committee, and two have been involved in the industry
training development as well. Typical for action research is the goal to improve
practice in local situations, use of practitioner information in addition to literature
(Costello, 2003). In action research the researcher is part of the development process
and not just an objective observer. Action research is commonly used in social
research, but due to its collaborative, reflective and participative nature (Zuber-Skerrit,
2007) it can be seen relevant for this type of development work as well.
Benefits vs. obstacles for BIM adoption and implementation
Many studies and reports have shown that the BIM uptake is becoming increasingly
important in the efficiency and international competitiveness of construction industry
(NBS, 2016; Kivits and Furneaux, 2013; HM Government, 2012; Newton and
Chileshe, 2012; Yan and Damian, 2008). The adoption of BIM is gaining momentum
in the construction industry and higher education worldwide (MacDonald and Mills,
2011; Suwal et al., 2014) as BIM has significant advantages through the life-cycle of
building: better understanding of customers’ needs and budget estimation, faster
decision making, design quality improvement, time and cost savings; productivity
improvement, effective project management information management, sustainability
enhancement and so on (Park and Kim, 2014; Redmond, et al., 2012; Grilo and Jardim-
Goncalves, 2010).
Despite these benefits, there are common obstacles, which make the take-up of BIM
slow. In 2004, Bernstein and Pittman already identified that there are three main
barriers to adopting BIM: business, technical and human problems and Park and Kim
(2014) specified issues based on three problems including lack of standards, lack of
client’s demand, interoperability, resistance to changing current practices and lack of
knowledge/skills and training. Similarly, Newton and Chileshe (2012) identifies lack
of understanding, education and training costs, start-up costs, changing the way firms
do business, and finding trained staff as the top ranked barriers. These barriers are
evidenced by Yan and Damian (2008) as habitual resistance to change, time and
human resource cost of BIM education and training discourages the industry from their
BIM adoption.

Support for BIM adoption and implementation internationally
According to Betts et al. (2011), global investment in capital projects is projected to
grow by 67% globally by 2020, but productivity in the construction industry has
decreased over the last two decades. Many countries in the world such as the UK,
Finland, Singapore, Australia and NZ have developed BIM adoption and
implementation strategies in order to improve productivity and attain economic
growth. Training and education is essential to achieve successful BIM adoption across
the industry. Close collaboration between academia, industry and government is
needed to create an efficient knowledge transfer mechanism to achieve common
understanding (Ranga et al., 2008).
Australia has had a proactive core of BIM protagonists in industry and academia who
have been working on the uptake of BIM for close on two decades. In particular the
buildingSMART Australasia committee has been working on open BIM and
promotion of the use of BIM from the very early days of the IFC being available as an
open standard. While there has been significant promotion to government of the
benefit of a mandate on the use of BIM in large government projects this has not been
achieved to date. However, significant BIM collateral has been developed over the
years and the country is well served by a mature National BIM Guide (NATSPEC,
2016), BIM Management templates, BIM Project Brief templates, work on a national
BIM object standard, etc. The NATSPEC BIM Education report (NATSPEC, 2015)
identifies that Australia is making slow progress in the uptake of BIM education,
though the 10 institutions which teach all of Architecture, Engineering, and
Construction are the most advanced in their offerings. Many of the technical colleges
(TAFE) are providing BIM in their courses, though usually focused around a particular
BIM software tool. The CodeBIM project (http://codebim.com/) is developing an
infrastructure for collaborative design education based on BIM as an initiative between
three universities and the Australian government office for learning and teaching.
Finland has been among the first countries to develop national BIM guidelines, but
BIM adoption rates are not higher than in other countries. According to the last BIM
survey (Rakennustieto, 2013) 87% of the companies in Finland are aware of BIM and
65% use BIM. Similarly as in many other countries adoption rate is expected to
increase rapidly and reach 90% by 2018. Government enterprise, Senate Properties,
which is responsible for property development, and facilities and operations
management of government buildings, together with buildingSMART Finland has
been the main force behind the development of Finnish BIM guidelines. First
guidelines were published in 2007 stating that all government projects procured by
Senate Properties are to be modelled following IFC standards from 1.10.2007. In
March 2012 Common BIM Requirements of Finland (COBIM) were published. This
included update of the old series 1-9 and introduction of new series 10-13 to add focus
on construction and facilities management and the whole life-cycle of buildings
(buildingSMART, n.d.). In May 2015 Common InfraBIM Requirements were
published and complemented with construction and maintenance information in 2016.
Common InfraBIM has similar structure as COBIM. (InfraBIM, 2016) Tertiary
institutes provide BIM education at different levels varying from CAD courses to
integrated project courses. Industry training courses are offered by the tertiary
institutes and some private education providers. In addition large construction

companies such as Skanska are offering in-house training as required. (NATSCPEC,
2015)
Singapore is one of the countries with the highest trend in the status of BIM adoption
also known as a world leader in the digitisation and automation of the issuing of
building permits. In 1995, the Construction Real Estate NETwork (CORENET)
project was introduced to promote and require the use of IT for different levels of
approvals in the AEC industry (Cheng and Lu, 2015) followed by the participation of
several governmental agencies including the Building and Construction Authority
(BCA) in the e-submission system requiring BIM and IFC (Cheng and Lu, 2015;
Khemlani, 2011) helping streamline the process for regulatory submissions (BCA,
2011; Oo, 2014). Understanding the operational challenges that entities confront in
considering BIM adoption, BCA has implemented the BIM Roadmap to help and
guide business owners (BCA, 2011). In addition, this was part of the government’s
plan to achieve the increased ratio of 80% BIM users by 2015 along with the growth
of productivity by up to 25% during 2010-2020 (Cheng and Lu, 2015; BCA, 2011).
The country has also developed specific academic programmes on BIM namely;
diploma in construction information technology mainly focusing on BIM and an also
specialist diploma in BIM available to undergraduate students and industry
professionals plus various workshops on BIM Modelling (Architecture, Structure &
MEP), BIM Management and BIM Planning Course (Building Developers & Facility
Managers) available to industry professionals (NATSPEC, 2015). The AEC industry
in Singapore introduced a $5.7 million BIM Fund and also established the Centre for
Construction Information Technology (CCIT) for early adoption of BIM (Oo, 2014).
However, only 20% of the local companies adopted BIM for their projects in 2011
(Oo, 2014). A series of actions were taken to improve this situation. A governing
framework to steer the implementation of the BIM Roadmap was provided by the
National BIM Steering Committee in 2011 (Teo et al., 2015). Currently, in terms of
standards/guidelines for BIM adoption, Singapore is a leading country (Cheng and Lu,
2015). Singapore alone, accounts for development of a significant proportion of the
global BIM standards/guidelines in the world (Cheng and Lu, 2015). Mandatory
regulatory BIM submission was enforced by BCA in 2013 (Cheng and Lu, 2015; Oo,
2014). As a result, 76% of firms adopted BIM in 2013 and this figure raised to 96% in
2015 (CM, 2015). In overall, Singapore has been very successful in terms of
encouraging BIM adoption resulting in a highly resilient BIM-enabled AEC industry.
The UK Government/Industry BIM programme commenced in July 2011 and
according to ‘Government Construction Strategy’ by Cabinet Office (2011), the
Government mandated that public sector centrally procured construction projects are
delivered using BIM from April 2016. Under this programme, Government,
Construction Industry Council (CIC) and industry have established a wide number of
working groups, standards and protocols for effective construction information
management and integration: BS1192: 2007, PAS1192 series, CIC BIM Protocol,
BIM Overlay to the RIBA Plan of Work, NBS BIM Toolkit, etc. Also, they have
worked with private sector clients, trade bodies (especially SMEs), professionals and
education institutions to have a smooth transition to BIM enablement. As a result, no
less than 54% of surveyed organisations in the UK are now aware of and using BIM
on at least some of their projects, and 97% of organisations are expecting to be using
BIM within five years’ time (NBS, 2016). However, challenges remain, as there is a

broader skills gap in BIM with less than half of respondents feeling confident, leaving
a majority who are not. To acquire BIM knowledge and skills, the BIM Academic
Forum UK (55 members from 30 teaching centres across the UK) has developed a
‘BIM academic framework’ towards a long-term vision of embedding BIM learning
and facilitated the development professionals with the relevant BIM knowledge with
the established potential learning outcomes requirements at Higher Education
Institution levels 4-7 (BAF, 2013). Also, the UK BIM Task Group (2011) not only
publishes ‘the BIM learning outcomes framework for employers’, training providers
and institutions like BRE, BSI group when they specify a training requirement and
develop a course for their team and company, but also engages with professional
institutions – CIC, RIBA, BSRIA, RICS, ICE, UK Contractors Group, Construction
Product Association – to provide the skills and knowledge required for BIM adoption
and implementation in the industry.
Case NZ – support for BIM adoption and implementation
BIM adoption in NZ
National surveys on adoption of BIM in the New Zealand context by Masterspec
(2013) and Eboss (2014) have shown a fairly rapid change in adoption starting from a
low base to levels comparable to countries seen as significantly more mature and
advanced in the BIM journey than New Zealand. In particular, the 2013 international
comparison (NBS, 2014) shows great awareness, and in some aspects fairly strong
uptake (see figures below).
Figure 1: Awareness of BIM (NBS, 2014)
Figure 2: Respondents aware of and currently using BIM (NBS, 2014)

Figure 3: Percentage of respondents who use IFC on their projects (NBS, 2014)
National Technical Standards Committee (NTSC)
In 2011 a partnership between industry and government was formed to address
productivity in the building and construction domains. Aiming at achieving a 20%
improvement in productivity by 2020 the Productivity Partnership deployed four
work-streams of procurement, skills, technology, and research and evidence. Within
the technology work-stream the Productivity Partnership sponsored the creation of the
National Technical Standards Committee (NTSC) to help enable BIM interoperability
in New Zealand and to promote open data standards. The NTSC is still sitting and
continuing to develop and guide initiatives to promote the digital interoperability of
location and building information.
For the Building and Infrastructure sector the National Technical Standards
Committee (NTSC) has the primary roles of:
1. Identifying the needs of the sector in the context of interoperability
2. Prioritising initiatives that meet the needs of the sector
3. Providing support to seed initiatives
4. Providing governance of any initiatives or projects the NTSC engages in
5. Promoting the application and acceleration of existing International open
standards, tools and methodologies in a New Zealand context
6. Providing a conduit between the sector and Government
7. Internationally representing New Zealand (where appropriate) for the
location, building and infrastructure sector, e.g. buildingSMART and the
Open Geospatial Consortium
8. Working with Standards New Zealand to ensure alignment of any standards
that are adopted
BIM Acceleration Committee (BAC)
Developed as an initiative of the NTSC in February 2014 the BIM Acceleration
Committee (BAC) is an alliance of industry and government charged with
coordinating efforts to increase and accelerate the use of BIM in New Zealand. The
charter of BAC is:
1. Promoting the application of BIM, by both actively promoting its use and
removing barriers to it use
2. Identifying and championing initiatives that improve productivity, safety and
building quality
3. Providing governance of any initiatives or projects the BAC engages in
4. Providing a conduit between Industry and Government in relation to the use of
BIM

5. Monitor the use of BIM across its range of uses.
In a very short period of time the BAC has commissioned and delivered on a range of
projects to meet this charter. Of particular note was the creation of the New Zealand
BIM Handbook, drawing on international experience of handbooks, and especially
those in Australia and the USA. A growing range of New Zealand specific case studies
has been documented, showing benefit for specific use cases. An initial national BIM
training programme was launched, utilizing the expertise of BRE in the UK, and now
being continued by the professional societies in New Zealand. Also, yearly surveys of
BIM use in New Zealand have gained the backing of the BAC.
The BAC is currently coordinating a growing number of initiatives in areas such as:
government as a client; supply chain clients; profession specific BIM training; regional
BIM networks; commissioning further case studies; investigating a national BIM
object library; and as described below the NBEWG coordinating BIM education across
all of New Zealand’s tertiary training institutions.
National BIM Education Working Group (NBEWG)
Similar to the UK, need for collaboration between the government, the industry and
the tertiary education was identified by BAC already early on. The National BIM
Education Working Group was established in December 2014 from the initiative of
BAC. NBEWG is reporting back to BAC. The charter of the NBEWG is:
1. Promoting the integration of BIM into all architectural, engineering and
construction (AEC) programmes in New Zealand
2. Promoting and following national BIM guidelines, such as NZ BIM Handbook
3. Monitoring and guiding the integration of BIM in the membership institutes
4. Providing national guidelines for BIM learning outcomes
5. Providing guidance in adopting BIM learning outcomes
6. Collaborating for joint activities and research projects to benefit BIM adoption
and implementation in New Zealand particularly through education and
training.
7. Working closely with industry in educational and research activities.
NBEWG has representatives from seven NZ tertiary institutes, which have interest in
integrating BIM as part of their AEC programme delivery. Since its establishment
NBEWG has followed the work of BAF closely. As an example the national guidelines
for BIM learning outcomes are based on learning outcomes defined by BAF.
Industry training
After the BRE training series five professional institutes: New Zealand Institute of
Building (NZIOB), Institute of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ), New
Zealand Institute of Architects (NZIA), New Zealand Institute of Quantity Surveyors
(NZIQS) and Specialist Trades, and a representative from the NBEWG formed a group
to develop NZ specific training material. The aim was that the training material would
be suitable for both industry training and tertiary education. The industry training
group is delivering the first package of training, ‘BIM 101’, in August 2016. The ‘BIM
101’ will be a free half day workshop offering basic awareness of BIM. The material

is available also for tertiary institutes to use as they see appropriate. The next step of
training, after ‘BIM 101’, will be discipline specific. The development within each
professional institute will commence as soon as feedback from ‘BIM 101’ is received.
It is planned that the NBEWG will work together with the professional institutes in
this development as well. The training development has been overseen by BAC. The
collaboration between industry, academia and government has enabled to form a true
industry wide view on BIM in NZ.
Conclusions
This research supports development of the base grounds for widespread adoption of
BIM in New Zealand. During this study, BIM implementation in various contexts is
explored. The outcome indicates that, while there are dissimilarities in terms of
adoption rates, challenges and breakthroughs, the shift towards improved BIM
adoption in all these countries is evident. In this view, New Zealand has not been an
exception. Notwithstanding, several common BIM uptake challenges in all these
regions overstress the need for continued research in order to diminish the barriers
along the way. Correspondingly, despite numerous technical advantages of utilizing
BIM, the lack of uptake due to various different reasons, depreciates the efficient
implementation of this concept. In this regard, the role of academia to provide solid
training is essential. Besides, the significant positive impact of an effective integrated
collaboration among industry, academia and government towards promotion of BIM
adoption is eminent. To cater for this collaboration, the New Zealand government in
general, National Technical Standards Committee (NTSC), BIM Acceleration
Committee (BAC) and the National BIM Education Working Group (NBEWG) work
closely to ensure the fundamentals for effective BIM adoption in New Zealand is in
place. Ultimately, this collaboration is anticipated to result in value-added BIM uptake
nationwide.
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