Critical barriers to BIM adoption in the Chinese architectural, engineering and construction industry

The Chinese government has recently promoted the use of building information modelling (BIM) in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry to improve construction innovation, working efficiency and project performance. The objective of this chapter is to identify the critical barriers to BIM adoption. A questionnaire survey was performed with 95 professionals. A total of 14 barriers were recognized as critical barriers to BIM adoption and are worth more attention from the government and industry practitioners. The top barriers included “lack of BIM implementation data in construction phase”, “reluctance to openly share information”, “lack of industry standards”, “lack of tangible benefits”, “lack of demand for BIM use” and “poor interoperability among BIM software”. In addition, the influence of barriers was not correlated with the years of BIM experience. Some barriers would persist after several years of BIM adoption. This chapter allows industry practitioners to take measures to overcome the potential barriers and enhance the implementation level of BIM and finally assure the far-reaching benefits of BIM.