Gathering End-user and Stakeholder Information in BIM-based Infrastructure Projects

Improving customer orientation has been identified as one of the major challenges in the AEC industry. A number of reports have highlighted the need for a change, greater efficiency and stronger client focus on the construction industry. Customer orientation refers to the idea that a project is only successful if it meets the needs of its intended end-users. This could only happen if customer and end-user information is connected with the project for its whole lifecycle. In the house building, where the customer is usually known beforehand, service-related tools has been developed to capture end-users needs in the different phases of the project. However, Infrastructure projects differ from house building projects in the several ways, for example, end-users are presenting a big audience and the ownership of the projects are typically public authorities. These characteristics, together with the basic features of the project management, makes difficult to exploit past experiences to the future projects. One of the major strengths in the building information modeling (BIM) is that it enhances collaboration between the team members and allows the mutual channel for information exchange. However, there is lack of knowledge how end-user and stakeholder information and requirements can utilize and gather in the systematic manner from the design phase to the maintenance phase and for the infrastructure life cycle. In a present, it is widely noted that research system in this area has been found tangled and ineffective. In this sense, BIM could be also an effective tool for gathering, storing and utilizing end-user requirements, information, and knowledge.