Analysis of negative impacts of BIM-enabled information transparency on contractors' interests

Building Information Modeling (BIM) generates accurate information in an explicit way and allows project stakeholders to easily access information of various types, greatly promoting information transparency during the lifecycle of a facility. Information transparency brings a number of benefits but potentially influences contractors' interests by weakening their core competencies or preventing some unethical but lucrative practices from occurring. This may impede the extensive application of BIM. However, it still lacks a comprehensive research on this. This research aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of the negative impact of BIM-enabled information transparency on contractors' interests and further on BIM adoption by conducting an anonymous questionnaire survey. The results show that 1) the transparency of construction techniques and methods can impair contractors' interests in the long run, but relevant information is almost not disclosed by BIM so far; 2) the transparency of construction resource, cost and time has an instant and direct impact on contractors' interests, but only resource-and-cost-related unethical practices are influenced by BIM; and 3) the transparency of construction quality and safety has little impact on contractors' interests and relevant unethical practices are almost not influenced by BIM. Besides, contractors are reluctant to share information or use BIM with owners, thus further impeding BIM adoption. Based on these results, this research also presents some implications for the improvement of current working processes among stakeholders in the BIM context to protect contractors' core competencies and prevent unethical practices. These findings are expected to promote the extensive use of BIM in the construction industry.