From Awareness to Implementation: BIM–IoT Adoption Gaps, Barriers and a Context-Sensitive Framework for Nigerian Construction Projects

Digital technologies have the potential to be useful in the construction industry, but the awareness of this doesn't necessarily lead to the use of digital technology within the construction process. This paper discusses the awareness gap and utilization of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the Internet of Things (IoT), ranks the implementation barriers, and suggests a context-sensitive route to implementation in the construction projects of Nigeria. A total of 220 questionnaires were distributed, of which 186 (84.5%) were returned, giving a survey summary. With this, the mean scores for BIM awareness were 4.12, while the mean scores for IoT awareness were 3.08, whereas the mean score on BIM usage was 3.76 and for IoT usage was 2.41. These descriptive awareness-usage gaps were 0.36 for BIM and 0.67 for IoT. Implementation cost (RII = 0.91), lack of skilled personnel (0.88), poor ICT infrastructure (0.85), resistance to change (0.82), and limited government support (0.79) were the five leading reported barriers. Proposed pathway of 7 steps: Use-case Definition, Readiness Assessment, Leadership and resourcing, Pilot integration, Workforce development, Evaluation and scale-up, Governance. Comparative ratings, where reported, were generally higher for BIM-IoT than for traditional approaches in four performance measures, but further reporting of comparative data is needed to allow for independent assessment of the underlying comparative data. The paper's contribution is an implementation-oriented description of the transition from awareness to use of BIM-IoT in a construction organization.