BIM tool development enhancing collaborative scheduling for pre-construction

Construction projects often suffer from backlashes in relation to poor plans and schedules. Especially pre-construction planning has been challenging due to a high complexity, an extensive amount of information, and a lack of site managers time to make the schedule. To solve these issues for pre-construction planning; new planning processes, methods and tools have been developed over the last decade. However, due to a disregard of the current planning processes these tools have been difficult to adopt in practice. In addition, these developed tools and methods are seldom developed from the user’s point of view. A promising development is the introduction of integrated planning as a concept in construction companies. It involves the use of BIM models in concert with a planning approach where the subcontractors engage in the planning. However, currently available tools are more geared towards experienced users such as expert planners and does not allow for a fully collaborative and integrated planning approach. While many current tools would tick many of the requirements identified, they still fail to address the base requirements from the collaborative work environment literature. This paper contributes with a user-centric design and development of a collaborative planning application showing the integration of the existing collaborative planning process. By adopting a socio-technical approach, the paper focuses on combining technology and processes supporting the users and their way of working in order to enable adoption of the solution. A design science research approach has been used to gather requirements and develop and evaluate the Visual Project Planner (VPP) application. The VPP application applies a collaborative, visual approach supporting interdisciplinary knowledge sharing between all parties involved where the subcontractors actively can contribute to schedule. The VPP application has potential to reduce time for pre-construction planning regardless of the planning approach used.