Digital innovation in Europe: Regional differences across one international firm

Abstract

Comparing the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) across geographies has emerged recently as an important discussion area, but it has been rarely researched. Research of BIM maturity across countries is vital for observing similarities and differences in adopting innovations and establishing strategies to transfer lessons across national boundaries. This is addressed by comparing BIM implementation in 146 projects of seven European countries as follows Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain (respectively 2, 21, 70, 11, 13, 15, 14 projects). These projects were from one international firm that works on different aspects of the built environment. A BIM maturity assessment, the BIM Maturity Measure (BIM-MM) was applied on these projects. Findings show that in overall, BIM maturity is the highest in Spain, followed by the Netherlands. However, when looking individually at the measured criteria, it has been observed that regions tend to do better than others in certain areas. Denmark and the Netherlands, for instance, have the highest percentage of projects with high maturity levels in ‘Open Standard Deliverables’. Therefore, the various digital artefacts that fall under the umbrella of BIM, are adopted at varying levels across countries. It is hoped that this study will deepen the understanding of BIM maturity across regions and influence new research and policies that build a collective approach to explore digital innovation in Europe.