Exploring the Impact of Collaboration on BIM Use Effectiveness : A Perspective through Multiple Collaborative Behaviors

Collaboration is considered an enabler for effective use of building information modeling (BIM). However, little is known regarding the impacts of multiple collaborative behaviors on BIM effectiveness. Through a systematic literature review, this study selected six categories of necessary collaborative behaviors in BIM-enabled construction projects (BECPs) for empirical analysis, including adaptive behavior, joint working behavior, harmonious behavior, flexible behavior, server investment behavior, and information-sharing behavior. A questionnaire survey was used to collect the data from 162 BECPs. Then, partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to examine the impact of the individual category of collaborative behavior on BIM effectiveness. The results showed that adaptive behavior, information-sharing behavior, and harmonious behavior significantly facilitated BIM effectiveness, while joint working behavior decreased it. Flexible behavior and server investment behavior positively impacted BIM effectiveness only in task effectiveness improvement, and had insignificant impact on task efficiency improvement. The results jointly reflected that, although many collaborative behaviors were deemed essential for BIM use, their implementation cannot directly contribute to the final BIM effectiveness, for which additional interventions should be adopted to realize their positive impacts on BIM use effectiveness. Implications for theory and practice are provided herein.