Abstract

This study is the first empirical assessment of BIM’s life cycle applications in the real estate sector of Ghana. It demonstrates how BIM can address information processing failures beyond 3D modeling in a developing economy context with housing deficits and low productivity. Using a mixed methods approach, we carried out semi-structured interviews with five real estate firms to study constraints in current information processing practices. This was followed by a questionnaire survey of 240 construction professionals to validate BIM uses across the building lifecycle using CFA. Qualitative results show that all five firms use only manual methods with little to no use of BIM, which leads to inefficiencies in design, construction and facility management. Collectively, these findings establish that manual information processing contributes to measurable cost and schedule penalties, with average impacts of 6.35% cost overrun and 15.2% time overrun across sampled projects, plus higher operating costs and errors in facility management. The CFA results confirm BIM’s multidimensional applicability in addressing these limitations. BIM demonstrates statistically significant influence across the design phase (β = 0.396), construction phase (β = 0.401), and operation phase (β = 0.829). The notably higher standardized coefficient for the operation phase suggests BIM’s strongest perceived value lies in post-construction facilities and asset management, where data continuity has been historically weak in Ghana.

Keywords:BIM, Real estate sector, Ghana, Building life cycle, Optimal design-construction-operation, Housing