ABSTRACT
Collaboration between key project stakeholders lies at the heart of the construction industry’s workflows. Perhaps more than in any other industry, effective collaboration is essential for the success of a construction project. Project stakeholders come together to deliver a project only to move on to the next project, where a new set of stakeholders need to collaborate afresh. This transitory nature of construction projects puts a particular onus on the stakeholders to develop a rapport and collaborative working practices rather quickly in order to make a success of the project at hand. There are a multitude of issues that come into play giving rise to various kinds of technical and human behaviour-related challenges that need to be addressed to implement an effective collaboration between the stakeholders. Building information modelling (BIM) has emerged as a credible enabler of such collaboration in this industry. However, several challenges still remain. This chapter provides the background to models of collaboration before giving an outline of BIM-based processes and other technological issues that need to come together to address some of these challenges in relation to collaboration. This knowledge helps in selecting appropriate collaboration models in large projects involving many team members. It also provides the foundation for research in advanced methods for enhancing the performance of collaborative processes.
