Online Planning and Management of Design Coordination Tasks with BIM: Challenges and Opportunities

While cloud-based collaborative building design processes have become commonplace, colocated meetings remain a central and integral part of the management of such processes in the construction industry. The restrictions on colocated meetings due to the Covid-19 pandemic have therefore created challenges for the management of building design. This study sought to develop an alternative method for design coordination in a cloud-based Building Information Modeling (BIM) environment, which reduces the need for such meetings. This was also seen as an opportunity to improve the way design coordination is currently managed in the construction industry, by changing several practices that for a long time have been assumed to be the default choice. It was found that online design coordination requires a more structured and formal approach and the definition of design tasks at a much higher level of detail or granularity than is currently common. There is consequently a need for a systematic process and supporting tools to correctly plan and effectively control the execution of a larger number of individual design tasks. A suitable method has been defined for online design coordination, which incorporates tools such as resource leveling and four-dimensional BIM that have not previously been used in this context. The method was successfully implemented in a real project, highlighting its feasibility and the ability to reduce the need for colocated meetings, while at the same time improving the design process.