Research On Formation Mechanism Of BIM Outsourcing Decision-Making Behavior And Its Application Strategy

Information technology outsourcing is the process enterprise wants to achieve the established strategic goals,by entrusting third-party enterprises to manage the enterprise’s information technology assets,resources and various related activities.In construction engineering,outsourcing is jointly determined by industry attributes and characteristics,and statistics show that the contribution of subcontractors in the construction process can account for up to 70 percent of the total value of a construction project.For construction engineering enterprises,outsourcing is an effective measure to improve project management performance,which is commonly found in large and complex construction projects.BIM(Building Information Modeling),as a technology with strong professionalism to assist construction project construction decision,is widely used in construction supply chain from planning,design to construction stage.Construction engineering enterprises have benefited greatly from BIM outsourcing,however,due to the inefficient decision-making in degree of BIM outsourcing,BIM provider selection and BIM application strategy,which lead to unexpected project management performance.Therefore,the effective BIM outsourcing strategy becomes a key factor to improve the project management performance of construction engineering enterprises.In order to reveal the formation mechanism of the BIM outsourcing decisionmaking behavior,this paper conducted the following studies by drawing on the research results related to IT outsourcing decision-making:(1)established a model of BIM outsourcing decision making behavior mechanism of general contractors with the framework of Theory of Planned Behavior,combined with transaction cost theory and institutional theory;(2)designed a questionnaire of BIM outsourcing decision-making behavior of general contractors,and Partial Least Squares Regression method is used to analyze the 200 questionnaires,and the statistical results showed that:(1)In order to ensure the effective implementation of BIM application,the general contractors need to allocate hardware,software and human resources for BIM application,which consumes a considerable amount of internal production costs of the enterprises,while BIM outsourcing can effectively reduce the investment for general contractors in the above production costs,and the more obvious the relative advantages of internal production cost of BIM,the greater willingness of BIM outsourcing by general contractors will be,and the results of the statistical model using PLS-SEM show that the advantage of production cost reduction brought by BIM outsourcing is the most important factor influencing BIM outsourcing intention of general contractors;(2)the effort,time,and costs incurred to search,create,negotiate,monitor,and administrate a contract between a contractor and subcontractor requires communication costs(e.g.,labor and time costs),and the higher transaction costs are,the more reluctant general contractors are to engage in BIM outsourcing;(3)influenced by industry pressure general contractors will make BIM outsourcing decisions driven by a combination of normative pressures and imitation pressures,and among peers of general contractors and partners,the larger number of enterprises that choose BIM outsourcing and the positive benefits generated by BIM outsourcing,the more willingness general contractors tend to BIM outsourcing,furthermore,the statistical results of PLS-SEM show that the normarative pressure on BIM outsourcing is more obvious;(4)The lower of BIM application capability of general contractors,the stronger willingness to outsource BIM,and BIM application capability can directly drive large-scale BIM outsourcing behavior.To clarify the selection strategy of BIM providers for construction engineering enterprises,this paper took 993 award-winning projects of the "Longtu Cup" National BIM award for six years from 2016 to 2021 as the data set and constructed the BIM outsourcing collaborate relationship network model containing 1214 enterprises by using social network analysis;the evolution mechanism of BIM outsourcing collaborate relationship network is explored by using social network analysis and SAOM model clarify the selection strategy of BIM service providers.Social network analysis and SAOM model were used to explore the evolution mechanism of BIM outsourcing collaborate network.The data analysis results of "Longtu Cup" show that:(1)BIM outsourcing collaborate networks become dense over time,which shows that more and more BIM providers are participating in the BIM cooperation led by the BIM clients.(2)by 2021,the BIM outsourcing collaborate network shows a distinct scale-free "small world" network structure,i.e.,the BIM cooperation opportunities among enterprises are unevenly distributed as a power-law scaling,indicating that a small proportion of nodes have a large number of collaborative ties,whereas the majority of nodes have only a few ties.The analysis results of SAOM model show that: the triadic structure and similarity effect are the criteria for construction engineering enterprises to select BIM providers,BIM providers occupying the triadic structure will gain more newly projectbased collaborative connections over time,construction engineering enterprises and BIM providers with similar organizational ownership types and greater geographic proximity are more likely to form new project-based collaborative connections.To clarify the specific application scenarios of different BIM outsourcing application models,this paper takes two actual engineering projects experienced personally as cases and sorts out two typical BIM outsourcing application models: one is the BIM outsourcing application model driven by BIM consulting enterprises;the other is the BIM outsourcing application mode driven by owners.Social network analysis is used to construct the BIM information/communication exchange network model of the above two BIM outsourcing modes,and social network analysis and computational experiments are used to compare and analyze the above two network structures.(1)There are large differences between the two BIM information communication interaction network structures,and the statistical results of social network analysis show that: in the BIM outsourcing application mode driven by BIM consulting enterprises,the decision-making is faster and more efficient,but need to indentify the capability of BIM consulting enterprise;in the owner-driven BIM outsourcing application model,the coordination among team members is higher and the information transfer is more efficient,but the decision-making is slow and inefficient;(2)the professional ability of team members has different impacts on the two BIM information/communication exchange networks,and the simulation simulation comparison analysis based on SIR model further shows that: the professional ability of team members has a more significant impact on the BIM consulting companydriven BIM outsourcing application mode,which is reflected in the poorer ability of error management in this network structure,manifested by slower propagation of errors,more number of errors caused,poorer ability of project members to resist errors,and the need to spend more time to solve errors.Therefore,the consulting-driven BIM outsourcing mode is more suitable for enterprises with general BIM application ability and need to control the cost investment of BIM application,but enterprises need to spend more time choosing a capable BIM consulting enterprise;the owner-driven BIM outsourcing model is more suitable for enterprises with strong BIM application ability and clear application target,but need to carry out corresponding BIM application;The owner-driven BIM outsourcing mode is suitable for owners who have strong BIM application capability and clear application objectives,but need to reengineer the project management process.The innovation of this paper are:(1)breaking through the research bottleneck by exploring the decision-making behavior of IT outsourcing from a single dimension and constructing a multi-dimensional model of the formation mechanism of BIM outsourcing decision-making behavior;(2)improving the understanding of BIM outsourcing vendor selection strategy and revealing the influence mechanism of BIM outsourcing vendor selection strategy;(3)discovering the specific applicable scenarios of different BIM outsourcing application models and proposing a BIM outsourcing application strategy.