Benefit-Cost Analysis of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in a Railway Site

Recent technological improvements have made substantial changes in construction industry. In specific, some technical applications, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), open up many possibilities. Some studies have articulated the use of BIM and its advantages in construction, but most of them are theoretical, not practical. This study is to provide an insight to obstacles in BIM research. By investigating a real project that could utilize BIM in planning and construction phases, the authors try to investigate a possible outline of advantages in BIM implementation. The study area was set to a railway construction site in South Korea. The site covers multiple railway tracks, stations, telecommunication facilities, infrastructure facilities, railway structures, and so on. In the site, the authors have identified 12 errors in 7 projects that could be prevented if BIM was utilized before the construction. The total upfront costs required to provide a BIM for the seven projects was $116,348. On the other hand, the total costs required to fix the errors in the seven projects was $166,486. This can be regarded as the benefit of using BIM, because if BIM was implemented then the associated errors could easily be replaced. Therefore, the benefit-cost ratio can be estimated as 1.32 for one-month delay and 1.36 for a three-month delay.