An investigation of comparison and evaluation of official BIM documents released in the USA, UK and Turkey

Abstract

Architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is in the midst of BIM transition across the world. In parallel, Turkish architecture and engineering firms are also experiencing such BIM transition. Regarding the sector wide change in the world; governments release standards, regulations and best practice guides to support not only the governmental institutions but also private sector firms on BIM transition. The United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) are two countries providing a continuous stream of official documents to support BIM transition with respect to the country perspectives, however; there are no such official documents released in Turkey yet. Therefore, current BIM practices executed in Turkey are in compliance with existing architectural and engineering practice documents in Turkey, which are dated and insufficient. This situation brings a question for the authors of this research that what kind of regulative shortcomings and deficiencies exist in BIM transition practices of Turkish architectural and engineering firms when compared with counterparts in USA and UK. The research question is tried to be answered by comparing and evaluating official BIM documents released in the USA and UK with Turkish architectural and engineering service specification document by using key BIM terms collected from best practice guides released in USA and UK. The selected key BIM terms are addressing potential legal issues in a BIM practice that in case of being not referenced, it is likely to be confront with claims and conflicts among project participants. The overall study has significant potentials on addressing not only common shortcomings of BIM implementation but also discovery of regulative gaps and challenging issues for the BIM implementation practices in Turkish AEC industry practitioners.