The Strategic Application of Building Information Modelling (BIM) to the Role of Construction Project Management

The iron triangle which contains time, cost and quality plays a very important role in the construction industry. Building Information Modelling (BIM) has triggered the way the construction industry operates and in particular 5D BIM. This dimension within the BIM model is more associated with the cost aspect of the iron triangle and the potential to be used by the constructional project manager or built environment professional to streamline workflows and increase the quality of services they provide to clients. 5D BIM encompasses the traditional 3D (three dimensional) model added to the 4D BIM time and then the costing as the fifth dimension. 5D BIM provides the contractor with the ultimate opportunity to produce accurate costs of projects, the expected timeline when the actual costs of the projects will occur, at the same time allowing the schedule to be optimised by taking into account the quantities of material produced from the 5D BIM model and the productivity rate of the project team. The 5D BIM model provides a great platform for the construction project manager to connect the processes of design, construction methods and costs; this on the other side calls for the construction project manager to embrace the digital transformation in the way quantity take off (QTO's) are produced. this research focuses primarily on the role of the construction project manager in south africa whereby bim is been perceived as merely being a software. the research method adopted a quantitative approach and qualitative approach were semistructured interviews were conducted to get a clear picture of the digital transformation of the construction project manager professional. The findings show that in south africa and in particular the construction project manager still use the old method of using Computer Aided Design (CAD) and 2D models to produce the costs. The research will be important for the construction industry and in particular for the QS practitioner to produce more accurate costs and thus productivity rate. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2019.