A Review and Scientometric Analysis of Global Building Information Modeling (BIM) Research in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry

In the recent decade, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has widely been adopted in the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry and completely upended the way we build. While BIM continues gain momentum in the industry, it has also attracted increasing attention from researchers. However, most of the current study focuses on reviewing BIM for management, BIM for green building, BIM for infrastructure and BIM for Facilities Management (FM). There are few studies about Global BIM review and to discuss their complex inter-connections. In this study, we adopted a scientometric analysis method to review global BIM research during 2004–2019. In total, 1455 scholarly bibliographic records obtained from Web of Science Core Collection database were established for the analysis. This study has identified the top productive and influential researchers, research institutes, regions/countries, subject categories and journals in the BIM field. In addition, 11 clusters of global BIM research were also identified including construction project, green BIM, construction safety planning, automated IFC-based workflow and so on. The authors distinguished 11 clusters of global BIM research into three stages, namely formulating stage, accelerating stage and transforming stage. Furthermore, the authors reviewed the BIM policy of Singapore and observed there is a co-production relationship between evolution of BIM policy and global BIM research. These findings provide valuable information for researchers, practitioners and policymakers by visualizing the current progress in the research field of BIM and highlighting future research needs.