Knowledge Management and BIM Practices: Towards a Conceptual BIM-Knowledge Framework

The construction industry is a knowledge-intensive and knowledge-generating industry. However, challenges exist in terms of capturing and sharing knowledge of best practices and lessons learned within projects, and from one project to another. This is mainly due to the multi-disciplinary, multiorganizational and temporary nature of construction projects, which causes valuable knowledge to remain with individuals and/or get lost with time. Therefore, it is critically important to effectively capture and share the experience-based knowledge that is generated in construction projects in order to enable improvements in decision-making based on continuous learning. Building information modelling (BIM) has emerged as a solution that could possibly help in this endeavour through effective collaboration and learning processes. However, currently, BIM practices mainly focus on digitalising traditional information exchanges among project stakeholders. Hence, there is little consideration of how experiencebased knowledge can be effectively captured in BIM-enabled projects and used for continuous improvement. This paper presents insights into this issue by drawing on the literatures on knowledge management (KM) and BIM implementation. It proposes a conceptual BIMKnowledge framework, the main contribution of the paper, which consists of a KM approach and five critical factors: individual psychosocial factors, organisational factors, economic factors, technological factors and client factors.