Factors Associated with 5D BIM Implementation: Perceived Importance and Relationships with Project Cost Performance

Although 5D Building Information Modeling (5D BIM) offers potential for cost control, its implementation remains constrained by multiple barriers. This study examines the relative perceived importance of six factors associated with 5D BIM implementation and their direct associations with project cost performance among higher-tier general contractors in Guangdong Province, China. Survey data from 234 contractor organizations, each represented by a knowledgeable key informant, were analyzed using SPSS, PLS-SEM, and IPMA to rank the factors, estimate their direct associations, and identify managerial priorities. Environmental factors received the highest perceived-importance ranking. The structural model shows significant positive direct associations between project cost performance and four factors: technological, organizational, environmental, and government policy; government policy has the largest standardized path coefficient among the six predictors tested. Operational and project-related factors show no statistically significant direct associations. IPMA places organizational and environmental factors in the high-importance, high-performance area, whereas government policy has high importance but below-average performance. This first empirical test of the previously developed extended TOE framework distinguishes perceived implementation importance from direct cost–performance relevance and clarifies its theoretical boundary. These context-specific findings inform contractor management and policy implementation and support future validation across regions, contractor types, and stakeholder groups.