Field study on the connection between BIM and daily work orders

A total of 831 daily work orders from five construction projects were collected and analyzed for the potential of linking the daily work orders with product elements in building information modeling (BIM). The purpose of the analysis was to see whether a BIM-based bill of materials (BOM) for each daily work order can be generated through the links. The analysis was done with the level of development (LOD) defined by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and it shows that, when LOD 300 is used, only 29% of the daily work orders have corresponding elements in BIM, whereas when LOD 400 is used, 98% of the daily work orders have corresponding elements in BIM. When the scope of the analysis is limited to those daily work orders associated with made-to-stock (MTS) type of materials, the percentage is 1.3% when LOD 300 is used and 99.6% when LOD 400 is used. This shows that the MTS (non-prefabricated) materials would benefit from using LOD 400 more than other types of materials that are prefabricated to a certain extent. The authors also found that whereas prior studies address the topic of generating a BOM for prefabricated materials, studies on generating a daily BOM for the MTS type of materials are difficult to find. For researchers who wish to work on the topic of BIM-based daily work orders and its constituent, a BIM-based BOM, the analysis of the 831 daily work orders shows that the use of LOD 400 is critical, especially for daily work orders and BOMs related to the MTS type of materials.