Abstract:
Construction contracts are vital for any project, and therefore right choice of payment system is
extremely important. Research have shown that about 62.8% of contractors have faced these payment
delays on Construction projects. One of the key reasons for delay in payments is that Interim Payments
are still manually prepared by the Contractor and physically verified by the Client which requires a lot
of time to process. The adaption of new technologies has not kept pace with the growth of industry
due to lack of studies on the impact of these technologies in construction industry. However, advance
technologies like BIM are now being adapted. Thus, this research purposes to digitize the processing
of IPC using BIM technology. Three objectives guide this research: To identify the existing
inefficiencies, present in processing of Preparation & Certification of IPC; To develop a BIM-based
framework for efficient Preparation & Certification of IPC; To validate the developed framework
through a digital platform using case study. Based on detailed Literature Review, 30 inefficient factors
were identified. A preliminary survey was done to authenticate the inefficiencies found from literature
and sample of thirty was considered and in total thirty responses were recorded. After that those BIM
features were identified from the literature which can adequately resolve the identified inefficiencies
and a Feature-Factor matrix is developed. Feature – Factor matrix is used to visualize that which factor
of BIM could mitigate the effect of any inefficiency found in literature and then research methodology
is developed. Following that, a prototype plug-in is developed in BIM platform and an under-
construction House project is used as a case study. The developed plug-in includes two panels of
“generate” and “Approval” for Contractor and Consultants respectively. Using those, a contractor
must generate WCRs and after approval from consultant, the quantity of WCRs has to be added in
Measurement sheet to update “Abstract of Cost” following that, the Contractor needs to re-submit all
the documents for approval from consultant. Third IPC of the said house project has been prepared
and validated using the developed system and the working of developed plug-in has been shared with
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industry experts for validation of the developed system in the form of Questionnaire survey. The
results obtained from that Questionnaire are satisfactory and signifying that the plug-in could be
implemented to automate the processing of IPC in construction projects.