An investigation of interoperability issues between building information modelling (BIM) and e-procurement

The European Union has set a target of 2016 for all government procurement to be fully electronic. A target of 1st April 2016 has been set for the United Kingdom Government departments for theimplementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM). However, Grilo and Jardim-Goncalves(2010) show that interoperability issues exist due to the heterogeneous nature of applications andsoftware systems used across the construction industry. As the deadline approaches the paperresults show that there has been an increase in different BIM enabled softwares being adopted. Itfurther indicates that the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC’s) adopted in BIM use are still causingproblems such as 50% of respondents loosing information and therefore need further work. Thereis a lack of use of both BIM and e-procurement together in many organisations indicates that there is much efficiency still to be achieved as software develops. In this regard the level of development is very important. Over half of the sample consider that this is decided by the client and discipline specific levels are suggested at 350. This level is required to get the balance between electronic transfer and manual input.