Exploring behavioural factors for information sharing in BIM projects in the Malaysian construction industry

Purpose – Despite the wave of enthusiasm for BIM as a platform for information sharing, issues from the context of information sharing behaviours still exist. The aim of this study is to explore the behavioural factors for successful information sharing in Building Information Modeling (BIM) projects in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach – Based on literature review, a questionnaire was designed containing seven identified behavioural factors and their sub elements. Data was collected through questionnaire survey with forty-two experienced BIM practitioners. In addition to that, qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine construction practitioners in the Malaysian construction industry. Initially, a descriptive statistical analysis was adopted, followed by multivariate analysis which was employed to examine the possible effect of demographic attributes (i.e. nature of organisation and work experience in BIM) on the behavioural factors. Findings – The analytical results indicated that communication, accountability and trust were the top three behavioural factors influencing successful information sharing. Additionally, majority of the behavioural factors on information sharing were found to be not significantly dependent on both, the nature of organisations and the level of BIM experience. Overall, the success of information sharing in the digital environment (i.e. BIM) depends on organisational behaviour supported by the collaborative constructs. Research limitations/implications – Due to the fact that BIM implementation in Malaysia is still in its infancy, this study was limited to local context with small-scale BIM practitioners. Therefore, their views may not represent all BIM related stakeholders in the industry. Practical implications – The success of information sharing in BIM projects is a result of a combination of various factors and this study provides construction practitioners with information on the behavioural factors, which could assist them in creating collective and collaborative information sharing digital environment. Originality/value – Despite the fact that this study is country-specific, the paper presents a new perspective on the behavioural context of information sharing in BIM projects. The findings further extend the current BIM literature by providing an insight into what it takes for project teams to reinforce their information sharing in the Malaysian digital environment through improvements in behaviours.

several relevant studies, in particular by Wickramasinghe and Widyaratne (2012) and Zhang, and Ng (2012) who have conducted research on information sharing within the construction domain. References were made in selecting the keyword and wording for items (which relevant to behavioural factor) to measure the behaviour towards information sharing in BIM. In addition, statements from the initial interviews were used to enhance the items to suit the local context. Regarding the format of measuring scales, items were measured by five-point scale, following Wickramasinghe and Widyaratne (2012) recommendation.
The respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement on the 7 Behavioural factors and its sub items on a five-point Likert scale as: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree, Strongly Agree. All items in the 7 Behavioural factor scales are preceded by the phrase "I agree that _____". Examples include: (i) Trust scale -"Trust and truthfulness in dealing with other employees is important to me"; (ii) Leadership scale -"My employer or supervisor encourages us to exchange information among team mates"; (iii) Reciprocity scale -"I willingly share information with the person that shares his/her information with me previously"; (iv) Accountability scale -"I shared information because it is my moral obligation to do so for the benefit of organization and community interest""; (v) Communication scale -"I gave feedback as much as possible when my colleagues ask me about the project"; (vi) Organisational Culture scale -"It is a norm for my team members and I to sit together and discuss on our project every week/fortnight/month"; (vii) Commitment scale -"I am committed to give my best for the task given by applying my relevant skills, experiences and knowledge"; Initially, the questionnaire was reviewed by three experienced construction professionals (qualified professional engineer), who have involved in more than two BIM projects in Malaysia. The purpose of this review was to enhance the content validity (e.g. statement, scales etc.) of the 27 items of the behavioural factors and the appropriateness and relevancy of the term used for the local context. To ensure the reliability and validity, the questionnaire was pilot tested among 10 local construction professionals (from different organisations) who were involved in BIM related tasks. For all measurement scales, standardised Cronbach's alpha was examined and the results of the Cronbach's alpha values for each factor is between 0.7 and 0.9. Thus, this indicates that the items and the scales have relatively high internal consistency and good psychometric properties. Although the initial findings indicate the internal consistency ranging from 'good' to 'excellent' (> 0.70) for all items, some of the items were slightly modified in response to the comments. Finally, a complete set of factors were established and included in the next stage of the survey.
The survey was administered using the snowball sampling method. Targeted respondents were professionals working in on-going BIM projects in the Malaysian construction industry. Due to the unavailability of database related to BIM-based projects, the sample size of the population considered is not precisely known. Thus, discussions within BIM professional networks and promoting organisations such as BuildingSMART Malaysia was carried out to establish the estimated number of suitable respondents to BIM studies within Malaysia. Based on this exercise, there is an estimation of 100±20 professionals within Malaysia, relevant to the study at the time of data collection. Initially, 100 targeted respondents have been identified and they were contacted in order to get their consent on participation. Out of 100, only 70 respondents gave positive response to participate. The questionnaire survey was then circulated either through email, social media (i.e. LinkedIn and WhatsApp) or by hand in accordance to the respondents' preference. It is worth highlighting that the sample size is small due to the fact that BIM is relatively new in Malaysia (BuildingSMART Malaysia, 2015) and the construction industry has a small population of experienced BIM professionals (Rogers et al., 2015;CIDB, 2016). Nevertheless, Coviello and Jones (2004) emphasised that even if the survey response is not significant, but if the respondents were drawn from a high quality group, significant findings and outcomes can still result. In addition, all the targeted respondents are located in the central region (i.e. Kuala Lumpur and Selangor) where most of the Malaysian industry's BIM adoption is reported to take place (CIDB, 2016).
This was followed by open-ended interviews, which were conducted with nine construction professionals from different organisations and BIM projects (2 BIM Manager, 3 BIM Modeler, 2 BIM Coordinator , 1 BIM engineer and 1 BIM academician), to triangulate the findings of the survey. Interviewees were selected based on specific criteria, i.e., they are currently working in a BIM project and holding a BIM related position.

Data Analysis
The data was analysed using descriptive statistics including frequencies and means to show the relative importance of variables. Inferential statistics such as Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was then employed to examine whether demographic attributes (i.e. nature of organisation and work experience in BIM) have peculiar effect on the behavioural factors investigated. Dependent variables were the variables with the seven behavioural factors. The findings were then triangulated with the semi-structured interviews.

Validity
It is worth noting that several number of approaches were used to establish the quality of this study: internal validity; construct validity and external validity. The pilot study (initial feedback) as well as description of the research and instructions for completing the questionnaire was included in the e-mail / social media requests for participation to enhance the internal validity. Next, data collected from diverse BIM practitioners via different means

Characteristics of the sample
From the 50 responses received, 42 were suitable for analysis after the elimination of missing value cases. Detailed demographic profile of each respondent is given in Table 2. 'Insert Table 2' The 7 Behavioural Factors Table 3 shows results of the questionnaire survey on the 7 behavioural factors influencing successful information sharing. From the analysis, the most important element under Trust factor is the "importance of trust and truthfulness in dealing with others" (mean = 4.21), while the lowest behavioural Trust element is "Trust that the recipient will not misuse the information given" (mean = 3.550). Meanwhile, over 15% of respondents were less concerned on the use of information given. 'Insert Table 3' For leadership, majority of the respondents (> 70%) indicated that top management plays an important role in nurturing behaviour towards information sharing. This is supported by the element "encouragement from management to exchange information among team members" (mean = 3.93) and "top management freely share information with lower rank" (mean = 3.74) ranked first and second on the list. Meanwhile, the lowest ranked element was "Received direct support and guidance from superior of all level" (mean = 3.55).
For Reciprocity, the element of "easily get help from others in future" (mean = 3.48) ranked first, while the lowest Reciprocity behavioural element is "Received valuable info from others" (mean = 3.02).
"My responsibility as an engineer/project teams to share information" (mean = 4.26) topped the behavioural element for Accountability factor, with the lowest behavioural element, "my moral obligation to share for the benefit of organisation" (mean = 3.83).
The most important behavioural element under the Communication factor is "communication between me and colleagues improves understanding of a task" (mean = 4.31).
Meanwhile, "easily to communicate with my superior or subordinates" (mean = 3.810) is the lowest behavioural element on the list, mainly because the ease of communication at all levels often depend on the size of the firm.
For the Organisational Culture factor, element "It is a norm for project teams to frequently sit together and discuss on project progress" (mean = 3.90) comes first, as the findings suggest that "actively participate in information sharing because of positive environment" (mean = 3.69) is the lowest behavioural element.
For the final factor, Commitment, the "worked hard to ensure that the task given is completed and achieved required objective" (mean = 4.29) was the highest on the list. In contrast, the "simply do the work just to get it done " has been identified as the lowest behavioural element (mean = 2.67). Overall, it is worth highlighting that, on average, the SD value for all the behavioural factors is between ± 0.8 and ±1.3, and this indicates that the distribution of the data (i.e. response) is clustered around the mean value (i.e. a little over 1 point away from the mean and this shows that respondents had no significant reliability issues on rating the factors). Table 4 shows the MANOVA results of the seven behavioural factors in influencing the success of information sharing based on the nature of organisation and experiences in BIM projects. As shown in Table 4 Table 4'

Discussion
The Communication factor has been identified as the most important factor (highest mean value of 4.053) in influencing successful information sharing in BIM projects. This is supported by the fact that BIM itself is part of communication based-technology for information sharing within a virtual environment (Mahamadu et al., 2013). Interviewee 1 (BIM Manager) expressed that "it's all about communicating information consistently and effectively to improve daily task. Project information are being communicated not just verbally, but through cloud base and physical transfer." Synchronising information across applications could speed up workflows and enable decision support, databases, and purpose-driven content sharing (Redmond et al., 2012). Majority of the interviewees viewed that effective communication can only be achieved if there is high-level of interaction between actors. One interviewee mentioned that, "Due to the principles of BIM which embraces collaboration, we have a policy in place that requires staffs of all levels to communicate and commit in information sharing behaviour" (Interviewee 3: BIM Manager).
The use of a collaborative model in BIM projects could strengthen the relationship between project teams, from the context of accountability. For example, interviewee 2 (BIM Modeller) mentioned that, "BIM coordinator and BIM modellers share information with others because it is their job to share project information." Furthermore, the use of BIM application helps project teams to perform their roles and responsibilities more efficiently and effectively (Latiffi et al., 2017). Despite the changing roles in BIM projects (due to additional BIM team hierarchy), interviewees opinionated that BIM tools have a significant impact on how information is being shared by everyone, subsequently influencing how problems are being solved. Interviewee 5 (BIM Engineer) mentioned that "for this kind of technology (BIM), project information passed to me (at any time) is useful in my task." Having information shared in an integrated platform, certainly helps the team to increase information flow, cross pollination of ideas and engage in concurrent solutions (Whyte and Donaldson, 2015; Akponeware and Adamu, 2017).
The high level of interaction and information involved in BIM requires trust between each project team members. This is aligned with Ling and Khoo (2016), who found that Malaysian construction practitioners adopt the practices of sharing trustworthy project information. Active information sharing can be nurtured by reducing conflict, breaking down differences (due to existence of trust) and shape individuals into having similar way of thinking, behavior and ideas. One interviewee expressed that "absent of trust causes no information disclosure, difficulties in coordination and collaboration, thus information sharing cannot be facilitated" (Interviewee 4: BIM Coordinator). In addition, for collaboration to be successful, trust and honesty is necessary in the networking system, as there is in the hierarchical system (Mathews et al., 2017).
The wide range of actors in construction projects has led to the importance of understanding organisational culture in managing cultural diversity in generating information.
Organisational culture plays a major role in emphasizing teams' collective contribution and involvement in the construction project lifecycle (Trigunarsyah, 2017). Interviewee 6 (BIM Modeller) explained that "there are no obligations for everyone to share information. Thus, having such positive culture is really a big help". Having an environment that accommodates collaborative information sharing will eventually influence the action and reaction of human behaviour, as employees behave according to a particular pattern of an organisation culture (Hosseini et al., 2012).
Several scholars have stated that leadership plays a crucial role in realizing the act of information sharing among team members. A leader should be able to inspire his subordinates to perform beyond the norm; able to increase the subordinates interest on the shared vision and