Modeling the Last-Mile Problem of BIM Adoption

Abstract

In recent years, the high expectation of Building Information Modeling (BIM) has increasingly attracted the attention of organizationsin developing countries. To catch up with the leading BIM practice, those ‘late mover’ organizations tend to benchmark and adopt BIM practices that have been proven effective by global leaders. However, the uptake of BIM use is largely stuck by the “last-mile problem”. While developers diffusing their standardized or generalized solutions to global users, organizations often find it difficult to adopt such solutions due to the contextual difference between such standardized and generalized BIM solutions and their use environments. This paper aims to firstly define the “last-mile” problem in BIM adoption and then, propose a conceptual model of such problem. In this paper, the last-mile BIM adoption is defined as “a decentralized process involving the linear diffusion of BIM solutions from its source developers to destination users”. Synchronizing literature on BIM and last-mile problems in various domains, a last-mile BIM adoption model is proposed by identifying the model components and developing a design framework. This study has both academic and practical implications. It offers a set of formal language to systematically describe the last-mile problem of BIM adoption, leading to an improved understanding of the last-mile process and problems therein. For practitioners, the study facilitates them to analyze last-mile problems and develop strategies accordingly.