Perceived Trust of Contractors in Building Information Modeling Assisted Projects

Both practitioners and academicians claim the benefits of BIM. There is no shortage of studies on the benefits of BIM. However limited studies have been provided to quantify or compare the benefits. In addition, most existing studies mainly focus on tangible benefits such as construction productivity, time savings, and cost reduction. Few studies have been conducted to quantify BIM's intangible benefits, such as trust and collaboration relationships. This study aims to fill these gaps by ranking and comparing the perceived difference of trust towards contractors by other stakeholders between projects with and without BIM. A global survey was developed to collect the difference of trust between projects with and without BIM as perceived by 131 BIM practitioners. Then, demographic analysis is used to summarize the profiles of the practitioners, their projects, and companies. Last, the perceived ranking and difference of trust are compared along the identified measurement indicators along different business types, building types, delivery methods, and project values between projects with and without BIM. Specifically, the analysis of mean and t test were used to evaluate if the level of trust towards contractors is improved in BIM-assisted projects. The analysis shows that the trust level is improved when project delivery method can enable different stakeholders to have minimized conflicts, when stakeholders actively interact with others through BIM, when the project is more complicated, and when project value is higher.