A Scientometric Analysis of Studies in Turkey: Driving BIM Into Facilities Management

Introduction

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is an IT-enabled approach that involves applying and maintaining an integral digital representation of all building information for different phases of the project life cycle in the form of a data repository (Gu & London 2010). Dated from the first introduction of the concept of BIM in the early 2000s (Penttila et al., 2007), evidence empirically proofing reduction in cost and time, enhancement in coordination and improvement in safety and quality speed up its diffusion into the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) business, especially for design and construction phases.

Facilities management (FM), on the other hand, refers to “an integrated approach to operating, maintaining, improving and adapting the buildings and infrastructure of an organization in order to create an environment that strongly supports the primary objectives of that organizations” (Barrett & Baldry 2003) and covers the longest duration in a building’s life cycle. As stated by Chotipanich (2004), buildings are designed or selected to meet the specific needs of organizations, but during occupancy process they need specific FM practices. Because FM processes generate and require excessive information, effective utilization of BIM in operational phase becomes crucial for professionals to achieve higher quality-built environment. However, compared with the number of studies focusing on BIM applications in design and construction processes, BIM applications in FM still fall behind (Pishdad-Bozorgi et al., 2018). For this reason, this study aims to explore the future opportunities to minimize the knowledge gap in implementing BIM for FM of buildings.