Review
Combining multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods with building information modelling (BIM): A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103451Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Combining MCDM with BIM is useful for decision-making in construction.

  • The application domains and common MCDM techniques combined with BIM are categorized.

  • Three BIM functions in MCDM process and two synergy approaches between BIM and MCDM are reviewed.

  • Five strategies for the improvement of combining MCDM with BIM are provided.

Abstract

Integrating building information to support decision-making has been a key challenge in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. The synergy of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is expected to improve information integration and decision-making. The aim of this paper is to identify strategies to improve the synergy between MCDM and BIM. From the earliest literature (2009) to the present, this study examines 45 articles combining MCDM with BIM. We find that the five major application domains are sustainability, retrofit, supplier selection, safety, and constructability. Five established strategies for improving the synergy between MCDM and BIM were discussed and can be used as a benchmark for evaluating the application of decision techniques in practice. This study points out gaps of combining MCDM and BIM in the current literature. It also sheds new light into combining MCDM with BIM for practitioners, as to promote integrated decision-making.

Introduction

The success of construction projects depends heavily on decision-making [47]. Decisions are judgments based on information, and poor-quality information inevitably results in poor decision-making [34]. As building technology progresses, the complexity of projects and the information that requires integration has also increased. Process fragmentation and traditional practices have hindered the integration of knowledge and information among stakeholders, and so undermines design decisions [69]. Building Information Modelling (BIM), as an innovative digital technology, is expected to transform the traditional process of information management [32]. Namely, horizontal integration among various stakeholders and vertical integration of information at different stages becomes possible with the incentive of BIM [17], which provides opportunities for integrating the fragmented Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. Both geometric and non-geometric data are included in BIM models [88]. BIM integrates data from different disciplines and can quickly and accurately extract information from components and assist in evaluation [53,90]. However, the question remains how to integrate and utilize building information to facilitate decision-making.

Over the past decade, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has begun to demonstrate its capabilities to integrate technical information and multi-stakeholder value in BIM-based processes for decision-making. It compares and ranks decision-making schemes by integrating component – and often conflicting – indicators from all information sources into a single overall indicator [42]. Three main steps make up the MCDM: (1) define relevant alternatives and attributes; (2) link numerical measures to the relative importance of different attributes and to the impact of alternatives on these attributes and; (3) apply numerical measures to sort and rank different alternatives. There are numerous MCDM problems in the AEC industry [5,47,56]. The potential ability of MCDM in the AEC industry can be better stimulated through its synergy with BIM [22]. Vice versa, the implementation of BIM can also be promoted by MCDM which helps to overcome limitations of BIM related to optimizing multi-objectives while still exploiting its benefits [45].

MCDM is expected to play significant role during the transformation of AEC industry into digitization. However, there is no literature review of combining MCDM with BIM for decision-making to leverage the potential from their synergy, and no strategies are given for review the application of combining MCDM and BIM. Based on the observed knowledge gaps, the primary concerns of this study are:

  • What application domains of the AEC industry use MCDM and BIM together?

  • What MCDM techniques are used in conjunction with BIM?

  • What strategies can be used for the improvement of the AEC industry by combining MCDM with BIM?

This review relies on 45 published papers in the field of AEC industry. In addition to methodology section, the paper is structured in four sections. The first part classifies the application domains using MCDM and BIM together. The second part categorizes MCDM techniques utilized with BIM. The third part is a discussion about five strategies for the improvement of combining MCDM with BIM. The last part is about conclusions and outlook for future research. The review is limited to publications from scientific journals, book chapters and international conferences, and only cover English articles. The purpose of this article is not to describe all the applications of BIM and MCDM in detail, but to identify the strategies to improve the synergy between MCDM and BIM from the literature.

Section snippets

Methodology

Systematic literature review uses an explicit and reproducible method to test hypothesis, summarize the results of existing studies, and evaluating consistency among previous studies. In addition, it aims to answer a specific question as well as reduce bias in the selection and inclusion of potential reviewed papers in objectively [75]. As systematic literature review is more transparent than other traditional and unsystematic review methods, it is relatively easy for other researchers to

Classification of application domains

As shown in Table 1, five main application domains were identified, namely sustainability, retrofit, supplier selection chain, safety, and constructability. For each of the domains, several subdomains were further identified to narrow down this classification.

Classification of MCDM methods

To tackle arduous decision-making problems in abovementioned application domains, various MCDM techniques have been developed by researchers. Table 2 is the description of MCDM techniques classified in this section. As shown in Table 3, the reviewed papers were categorized into individual and hybrid MCDM approaches based on whether the paper uses a single technique or a hybrid of multiple techniques. The following contents of this section reveal the essential definition and the primary

Discussion

As shown in Fig. 4, there is a significant upward trend in the last decade in combining MCDM with BIM. To deepen and extend our understanding of the synergy between BIM and MCDM, our research systematically reviewed the academic literature and drawing upon 45 papers, has suggested mainly five application domains, six MCDM techniques and three BIM functions. The five application domains summarizing our research findings are: sustainability, retrofit, supplier selection, safety, and

Conclusion

This paper reviewed 45 papers to examine previous studies about combining MCDM with BIM in the AEC industry. Selected publications involve the earliest literature (2009) of the searching result to the present (April 2020), distributing around a decade with dramatically increasing in recent two years. Five major application domains of combining MCDM with BIM were identified: sustainability, retrofit, supplier selection, safety and constructability. The review further found that the most widely

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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