Adoption drivers and barriers of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Europe

Building Information Modelling (BIM) enables time, cost, and materials savings in building design and construction. However, the promise of BIM is yet to be realised. We assessed the current state-of-the-art in BIM adoption and use, identifying both barriers and opportunities across six dimensions defined by the PESTLE framework (political, economic, social, technical, legal, environmental). We combined market survey, literature review, and new insights from 41 expert interviews with architects, consultants and constructors across 11 European countries. We find BIM is used principally by larger firms as a design and data-processing tool to enable collaboration between project partners. BIM’s value proposition is primarily to streamline construction processes not improve resource efficiencies. Barriers to BIM adoption include interoperability issues, split incentives and value chain fragmentation, and weak economic incentives particularly for small firms. In the medium-term we find two important drivers of more widespread BIM adoption. First, institutional investors in the commercial buildings sector are increasingly pushing green certification standards for which compliance is demonstrated by BIM. Second, whole building lifecycle emission regulations for buildings mandated by the EU from 2030 will require BIM calculations. Four pioneer Northern European countries already have similar emission limits in place. Under realistic assumptions, we estimate material savings enabled by BIM in new building construction could deliver 21–31% embodied emission reductions after 10 years.