Peter China Mashinini
Jeffrey Mahachi
Trynos Gumbo
Thulisile Ncamsile Mphambukeli- University of Johannesburg Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, Johannesburg, South Africa
Purpose: This review interrogates global Building Information Modelling (BIM) uptake in public-infrastructure programmes to distil evidence-based lessons and policy levers relevant to South Africa’s Public–Private Partnership (PPP) pipeline.
Findings: Statutory mandates aligned to ISO 19650, ministerial steering bodies and open-standard deliverables consistently accelerate BIM diffusion and generate cost-accuracy improvements of 5%–10%, carbon savings of 15%–20% and dispute reductions of up to 40%. Conversely, voluntarist policies, SME skills gaps and fragile digital infrastructure fragment value chains. South Africa exhibits all three weaknesses: only 15% of firms produce federated models, and no Treasury directive hard-codes IFC deliverables. Evidence indicates that regional BIM labs, grading-linked competence requirements and incentive-weighted procurement can close these gaps.
Research limitations/implications: The study relies on published cases, grey literature and proprietary project data were excluded, potentially understating undocumented innovations. Future mixed-methods research on live South African PPPs is required to quantify policy impact.
Practical implications: Recommendations include amending the PPP Manual to mandate ISO 19650/IFC models, establishing a Treasury-funded Digital Infrastructure Skills Fund, and integrating BIM metrics into CIDB grading and payment schedules.
Originality/value: The paper synthesises heterogeneous global evidence into a coherent maturity framework and offers the first targeted, policy-ready road-map for BIM diffusion in South Africa’s infrastructure sector.
1 Introduction
Public infrastructure accounts for more than 60% of annual capital expenditure in many emerging economies, yet delivery remains characterised by cost overruns and opaque data exchange (Fakoyede et al., 2024). Global policy circles increasingly position Building Information Modelling (BIM) as the systemic remedy, citing its ability to federate geometric, schedule and cost data under open schemas such as IFC 4.3 (Salzano et al., 2023) and ISO 19650 (Mitera-Kiełbasa and Zima, 2024). Empirical studies on highways (Nielsen et al., 2024), rail corridors (Belay et al., 2023) and social housing (Brito et al., 2021) report defect reductions exceeding 25% when BIM is contractually mandated.
Nevertheless, fragmented governance dilutes these gains; only 54% of United Kingdom local authorities enforce Level-2 deliverables (Zahedi et al., 2022), while Indonesian bridge-twin pilots suffer IP disputes in the absence of clear ownership clauses (Saksena and Sastrawiria, 2024). Skills and bandwidth deficits similarly hamper Peru’s contractor cohort (Murguia et al., 2023) and Jordan’s public clients (Gharaibeh et al., 2022). South Africa mirrors these fissures, with voluntary guidelines outpacing statutory reform (Calitz and Wium, 2022) and SMEs citing prohibitive licensing costs (Ariono et al., 2022; van Wyk et al., 2021).
Against this backdrop, scholars advocate integrated leadership, targeted up-skilling and public-private consortia to unlock BIM’s sustainability dividends (Motalebi et al., 2025; Nikologianni et al., 2022; Alhusban et al., 2024; Rinchen et al., 2024).
Accordingly, this review aims to interrogate global BIM adoption in public infrastructure to derive context-specific strategies for South Africa’s PPP-dominated asset pipeline.
2 Data and synthesis - PRISMA model
2.1 Identification
A systematic search (Scopus; Web of Science Core Collection; ASCE Library; IEEE Xplore; ScienceDirect; Wiley Online; Taylor & Francis; Emerald; MDPI) covering 2008–01 August 2025 returned 1,124 records (Figure 1). During the initial availability check 148 records were removed because full-text access could not be obtained (publisher restrictions or unavailable archives), leaving 976 records eligible for de-duplication and formal screening.
Figure 1. PRISMA model. Source: Author.
2.2 Screening
The 976 records were de-duplicated (n = 414 duplicates removed), yielding 562 unique records for title and abstract screening. Two reviewers independently screened abstracts and titles, excluding 412 records that were out of scope (e.g., building-only case studies without public-works relevance, trade press items, proprietary reports without verifiable methods, or studies focused on non-infrastructure digital tools). This produced 150 articles for full-text retrieval.
2.3 Eligibility
Full texts for 150 articles were retrieved and appraised against prespecified inclusion criteria (public-infrastructure or PPP focus; empirical, policy analytic or review design; verifiable methods). Independent quality appraisal used MMAT/JBI/AMSTAR-2 as appropriate. 100 full texts were excluded with reasons: book chapters (n = 22), poor methodological quality or insufficient reporting (n = 28), or topical irrelevance to public-infrastructure BIM adoption (n = 50). The eligibility assessment therefore advanced 50 studies to synthesis.
2.4 Included
A final set of 50 studies met all inclusion criteria and were retained for narrative synthesis. The corpus comprises empirical case studies, cross-country policy analyses and systematic reviews published 2008–2025, directly addressing BIM adoption, standards (IFC/ISO 19650), procurement instruments, skills interventions and measurable outcomes (cost accuracy, dispute incidence, carbon reporting) in public infrastructure contexts. These studies form the evidentiary basis for the comparative findings and policy recommendations in the review.
3 Conceptual overview of BIM in public infrastructure
Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a digital, object-based information system that combines geometry, cost, schedule and performance data into interoperable, federated models (Sampaio, 2022; Salzano et al., 2023). In public infrastructure projects BIM functions as a virtual rehearsal: agencies simulate alignments, utilities and rights-of-way to detect clashes and optimise designs before tendering, replacing serial 2-D exchanges with concurrent model review (Guo et al., 2021; Akcay, 2022). Parametric modelling enables rapid scenario testing for traffic, hydrology and planning, transforming feasibility studies into decision platforms rather than static reports (Belay et al., 2021a; Arrotéia et al., 2021). Because disciplines author and consume shared model objects within a Common Data Environment (CDE), spatial and systems conflicts surface as rule-based exceptions rather than unforeseen site problems, shortening clarification cycles and reducing change orders (Belay et al., 2021c; Alshibani et al., 2024). Model objects can carry fabrication tolerances and identifiers that feed CNC fabrication and robotic placement, improving design-to-field fidelity and cutting manual re-keying errors (Murguia et al., 2023; Alhusban et al., 2024). As supply chains shift from paper submittals to machine-readable deliverables, automated compliance checking and model-validated quantity take-offs accelerate procurement and enable payment gates tied to verified digital milestones (Tan et al., 2022).
Sustainability is embedded through environmental product declarations and energy kernels; scenario engines quantify embodied and operational carbon at each iteration, steering material choices and logistics optimisation (Belay et al., 2023; Jia et al., 2021). Where national ceilings exist, BIM’s version history supplies auditable evidence for regulators, converting life-cycle assessment from retrospective to predictive (Belay et al., 2021b; Yusuf et al., 2022). Then, asset tags connect the model to sensor feeds and work-order systems, which lets you do predictive maintenance and audits that are required by treasury regulations (Belay et al., 2021a; Guo et al., 2021).
China shows a different path of progress. For procurement authorities, these capabilities create competitive yet transparent tendering: model-based quantities and time-location charts are generated algorithmically, discouraging scope padding while supporting early contractor involvement without harming probity (Alhusban et al., 2024; Akcay, 2022). Open schemas such as IFC 4.3 protect governments from vendor lock-in, aligning information stewardship with digital-sovereignty agendas (Salzano et al., 2023; Arrotéia et al., 2021). Consequently, BIM functions as the integrative language of public infrastructure, delivering cost certainty, resilience reporting and social-value tracking while advancing carbon neutrality, circular-economy material loops, and evidence-based asset management across national portfolios (Belay et al., 2021c).
4 Theoretical framework
To strengthen the manuscript’s theoretical grounding and analytical precision, recent empirical and methodological contributions have been integrated into the framework that links governance instruments, capability-building and observable adoption outcomes. First, empirical work that classifies governmental roles in PPP infrastructure (Thai et al., 2025) is used to operationalise governance prescriptions into clause-level instruments: a legally enforceable IFC/ISO 19650 schedule at contract gateways, explicit assignment of the public-sponsor information-manager duty, and model-authenticated milestone payments. Each instrument is now mapped to a small set of ex-post KPIs (claim rate per R100m, percent federated-model compliance, time-to-approval), thereby converting high-level recommendations into measurable performance tests that can be evaluated using the difference-in-differences design proposed (Thai et al., 2025; Mitera-Kiełbasa and Zima, 2024; Alejandro et al., 2023).
Second, the manuscript embeds a decision-analytic layer to prioritise scarce public investments. A critical-success-factor (CSF) framework and hybrid fuzzy MCDM approach (FAHP/FVIKOR) are adopted to rank interventions (regional BIM labs; CIDB grading reforms; model-payment gates) against criteria weighted by Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) constructs: perceived usefulness (value capture), perceived ease-of-use (complexity reduction), trialability and observability (Schery et al., 2023; Gharaibeh et al., 2022). An illustrative FAHP example shows how Treasury can compute normalized weights and rank alternatives to maximise median readiness gain per rand spent; this makes the Skills Fund and lab network fiscally defensible and transparent in budget submissions.
Third, community-facing design features that increase trialability and observability are incorporated into the pilot design. Evidence on public perception and local stewardship (Li et al., 2025) informs living-lab demonstrators, formal stewardship agreements, and public dashboards that reduce perceived complexity among municipal officials and SMEs and accelerate adoption spill-overs. These demonstrators simultaneously supply the empirical inputs (claims, rework hours, carbon metrics) required for robust programme evaluation and create visible, replicable demonstration effects that amplify diffusion (Li et al., 2025; Belay et al., 2021a).
Collectively, these integrations deepen the manuscript’s theoretical linkage to TAM (Davis, 1989) and DOI (Rogers, 2003), transform recommendations into operational instruments, and supply a replicable prioritisation methodology and pilot design that make national BIM diffusion strategies both analytically rigorous and practicable.
5 Global landscape of BIM adoption in public infrastructure
United Kingdom scholarship consistently portrays the 2016 Level-2 mandate as the archetype of state-led digital transformation (Zahedi et al., 2022). Mitera-Kiełbasa and Zima (2024) contend that three mutually reinforcing mechanisms; mandatory ISO 19650 compliance, a centrally funded BIM Task Group, and whole-life cost appraisal elevated maturity from pilot projects to systematic procurement. However, Fakoyede et al. (2024) report persisting fragmentation: only 54% of English local authorities require federated models, exposing a policy–practice gap that weakens the United Kingdom’s claim to “Level 3 readiness” (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Mandatory BIM requirement for public investments in Europe. Source: Mitera-Kiełbasa and Zima (2024).
In the United States, federal leadership is softer, but supply-chain pull is stronger. Nielsen et al. (2024) identify the Transportation Research Board’s corridor-digitisation programme as the de-facto national standard for highway BIM, while Rinchen et al. (2024) emphasise that the absence of a statutory mandate has not impeded adoption; instead, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ BIM Guide drives voluntary convergence across 23 state DOTs. Brito et al. (2021) nonetheless warn that inconsistent contract language permits data drop-offs at hand-over, compromising the asset-centric ambitions of federal bridge owners (Table 1).
Table 1. Cross-jurisdictional matrix of BIM maturity, roll-out chronology, quantified benefits and policy levers in public-infrastructure programmes.
Australia exemplifies a devolved yet ambitious model. Fakoyede et al. (2024) rank Australian agencies second globally for digital-twin experimentation, yet Zahedi et al. (2022) classify the nation as “developing” because only Queensland and New South Wales embed BIM in public works legislation. Saksena and Sastrawiria (2024) show Queensland’s scan-to-BIM standard outperforming Western Australia’s CAD-based bridge register. Nguyen et al. (2024) argue that until a federal mandate materialises, Australian maturity will remain project-dependent.
China demonstrates a contrasting growth-oriented trajectory. Rinchen et al. (2024) document how the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development’s 2019 directive obliges provinces to integrate BIM into all “super-large” public schemes. Gharaibeh et al. (2022) find that such top-down pressure accelerates timber-bridge pilots, yet limited interoperability persists because Chinese platforms prioritise domestic IFC variants. Nikologianni et al. (2022) add that ecological metrics remain divorced from core deliverables, diluting sustainability returns.
Cross-jurisdictional syntheses reveal convergent obstacles. Lack of certified professionals dominates Brazilian, Vietnamese and Swedish public bodies alike (Brito et al., 2021; Nguyen et al., 2024; Gharaibeh et al., 2022), confirming Zahedi et al.’s (2022) meta-analysis.
Institutional remedies diverge: the United Kingdom invests in academies, whereas China funds proprietary software; Australia and the US rely on market incentives. Mitera-Kiełbasa and Zima (2024) predict that Europe will mandate common asset ontologies by 2030, a milestone other regions resist for now. Until training, standardisation and mandate coherence align, global infrastructure BIM maturity will continue to evolve unevenly.
6 Local landscape of BIM adoption in South Africa
South Africa’s BIM trajectory is characterised by sporadic experimentation rather than systemic reform, a pattern Venter et al. (2021) trace to historically fragmented information practices within quantity-surveying firms. Despite the Construction Industry Development Board’s 2019 draft digital framework, Calitz and Wium (2022) note the absence of a statutory BIM mandate, leaving public clients to “recommend” rather than “require” model deliverables, a policy gap that Barqawi et al. (2022) link to employer-initiated programme delays.
Industry maturity assessments place the country between BIM Stage 0 and Stage 1, with Prinsloo and Bekker (2025) reporting that fewer than 15% of surveyed AEC organisations generate coordinated 3D models for collaboration, corroborating (Kubjana et al., 2024), who find recurring digitisation challenges rooted in legacy CAD cultures. Small-to-medium enterprises, which execute most public infrastructure work, perceive BIM overheads as commercially prohibitive; Deacon and Botha (2023) record that only 8% of central South African SMEs operate licensed authoring tools, and Camngca et al. (2022) show a parallel under-utilisation of ICT in provincial departments, reinforcing a “digital divide” across the supply chain.
Regulatory inertia co-exists with isolated champions: the South African National Roads Agency’s limited 5D pilot on the N2 upgrade demonstrated 7% cost-accuracy gains (Saad et al., 2025), yet Daura et al. (2023) argue that without Treasury-level procurement clauses, these pilots remain “islands of excellence.” Contractual standardisation lags as well; Rasebotsa et al. (2024) identify the absence of BIM clauses in NEC-based social-infrastructure projects, amplifying data-ownership disputes highlighted by Adekunle et al. (2022) between employers seeking openBIM deliverables and employees schooled in proprietary formats. Skills shortages compound regulatory shortcomings: Tjebane et al. (2022) contend that AI-enabled decision support cannot mature where BIM object-libraries are still externally sourced, while Akinradewo et al. (2022) reveal that facilities-management teams lack COBie literacy, undercutting life-cycle value propositions.
Notwithstanding these barriers, demonstrable performance benefits exert pressure for wider uptake. Olanrewaju et al. (2021) statistically model a positive correlation between BIM-driver awareness and reduction of rework frequency across the project life-cycle, and Olugboyega and Windapo (2021) show that increased client literacy diminishes cultural resistance from 38% to 23%.
When BIM is coupled with Design-for-Manufacture-and-Assembly protocols, productivity advantages magnify; Widanage and Kim (2024) document 30% assembly-time savings achievable for South African precast viaducts, a performance benchmark that Emere et al. (2025) deem indispensable for achieving national sustainability objectives. Institutional research confirms these efficiency gains. Motalebi et al. (2025) identify stakeholder engagement, transparent issue monitoring and federated model evaluations as critical success factors that together reduce design-clarification cycles by roughly 50%. Ariono et al. (2022) corroborate this pattern in a comparative study of developing-country contexts. Nevertheless, cost–benefit asymmetry persists, and Sriyolja et al. (2021) warn that without government-backed incentives the large up-front investments seen in Indonesia will similarly constrain adoption across Africa.
This viewpoint is supported by Ndwandwe et al. (2024), who identify software licensing and hardware upgrades as the primary challenges facing Malawi that could also affect the South African market.
Adetoro et al. (2025) further argue that donor-funded public projects adopt BIM only when international consultants impose it, suggesting external pressure rather than endogenous policy as the primary catalyst. Finally, Saliu et al. (2024) remind that regional modular-construction ambitions will remain aspirational unless BIM interoperability standards penetrate the vocational-training syllabus, a curriculum reform (Emere and Oguntona, 2025) deem essential for mainstreaming sustainable construction competencies.
South Africa follows an irregular path of BIM testing instead of implementing widespread changes. The N2 Wild Coast Toll Road project of SANRAL shows this because two out of eight contracted firms provided ISO 19650-compliant models. The agency had to accept 2D-3D hybrid deliverables because of which increased coordination costs by R180 million. The research by Venter et al. (2021) shows that quantity-surveying firms have historically used fragmented information practices, which continue to make BIM implementation challenging. The Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project shows institutional challenges because the project switched to traditional procurement after 18 months when tier-2 contractors stated that licensing costs reached R2.8 million per firm setup. The Construction Industry Development Board has not implemented its 2019 draft digital framework. The smart water infrastructure programme of eThekwini Municipality shows this because only 3 out of 15 participating SMEs reached Level-1 BIM maturity. The study by Calitz and Wium (2022) shows that public clients use “recommend” instead of “require” model deliverables.
7 Comparative challenges in emerging economies
Emerging-economy BIM trajectories commonly converge on three structural constraints: policy disjunction, human-capital shortages, and fragile ICT backbones (Table 2). Policy disjunction appears where high-level guidance lacks statutory teeth or where mandates stop at procurement rather than follow-through. For example, Ethiopia’s “adopt-if-able” approach produces uneven uptake between public sponsors and private implementers (Belay et al., 2021a), while South Africa’s Treasury circulars have been criticised as “directive in rhetoric, discretionary in effect” because they fail to create compulsory contractual triggers for model deliverables (Calitz and Wium, 2022). Similar tender-stage mandates in Turkey produce downstream data silos when contract language does not bind hand-over practice (Akcay, 2022), a pattern echoed in South African quantity-surveying practice (Venter et al., 2021).
Table 2. Empirical validation revealed in primary studies.
Fragmentation at the subnational level also weakens coherence: Brazil’s OrçaBIM programme advances national guidance, yet misalignment with provincial procurement statutes fragments implementation (Brito et al., 2021); South Africa’s nine disparate provincial ICT strategies likewise create mutually unintelligible technical requirements that raise compliance costs for firms (Kubjana et al., 2024). These governance gaps amplify the second constraint is skills scarcity. Vietnam reports only modest model-authoring capacity among public teams (≈12%) (Nguyen et al., 2024); South African SMEs show even lower formal tool penetration (≈8%), indicating a comparable readiness deficit (Deacon and Botha, 2023). Where capacity is weak, agencies import external consultants to bridge gaps, creating dependency and higher premia on projects (Belay et al., 2021b; Saad et al., 2025).
The third constraint is infrastructural fragility which compounds the other two. Recurrent bandwidth and server instability in Malawi cause cloud-model desynchronisation that disrupts collaborative workflows (Ndwandwe et al., 2024); South African municipal outages produce similar CDE upload failures that stall procurement milestones (Camngca et al., 2022). Financially, these combined pressures shift training costs onto practitioners; in Nigeria three-quarters of federal works staff self-fund upskilling, lowering morale and sustainability of skills investments (Daura et al., 2023), a dynamic observed among Gauteng contractors as well (Olugboyega and Windapo, 2021). In sum, effective BIM diffusion in emerging contexts requires policy hardening, funded capacity building, and resilient digital infrastructure applied together rather than in isolation. Peruvian contractors cite limited server redundancy as a barrier to longitudinal BIM use (Murguia et al., 2023; Prinsloo and Bekker, 2025) identify similar single-node vulnerabilities on domestic projects. Saudi analyses rank the power of “fragmented databases” as a dominant barrier (Alshibani et al., 2024), reinforcing Ariono et al.’s (2022) cross-country finding that interoperability deficits magnify where ICT backbones are weak, a condition (Nielsen et al., 2024) deem acute for African road-BIM pilots and Saksena and Sastrawiria (2024) confirm for Indonesian bridge twins. Collectively, these parallels situate South Africa within a broader emerging-economy narrative of aspirational policy, precarious skills and brittle digital infrastructure.
8 Enabling conditions and success factors
Robust empirical evidence demonstrates that decisive leadership and an unambiguous vision are the primary catalysts of successful BIM programmes. Brazilian public agencies created a ministerial-level steering committee that issued compulsory adoption road-maps, a move shown to raise organisational readiness scores by 43% within 2 years (Brito et al., 2021). Vietnamese transport departments reproduced that hierarchical model and linked directors’ bonuses to ISO 19650 compliance, accelerating model-based tendering on 28 provincial road projects (Nguyen et al., 2024).
Conversely, fragmented governance in many African and Gulf states still diffuses accountability and prolongs pilot phases (Alhusban et al., 2024), confirming Rinchen et al.’s (2024) meta-finding that “strong top-down impetus is non-substitutable.” Targeted human-capital strategies consistently appear as the second success vector. Sweden’s wood-construction sector mandated 120 h of accredited BIM training for site engineers and recorded a 31% clash-reduction rate on multi-storey projects (Gharaibeh et al., 2022). Indonesia’s bridge agency combined scan-to-BIM workshops with an on-site “digital twin laboratory,” cutting asset hand-over time from 7 to 14 days (Saksena and Sastrawiria, 2024). Adekunle et al. (2022) corroborate that explicit role specifications like BIM modeller, coordinator, and information manager are found to minimise competence gaps between employer demand and the labour market.
Public-private consortia strengthen diffusion by pooling fiscal and knowledge resources. The United Kingdom’s Roads Information Framework demonstrates how joint funding enabled open IFC repositories and slashed information requests during construction by 52% (Nielsen et al., 2024). Similar partnerships in Ethiopia improved schedule adherence by 18% on rail corridors when state-owned enterprises co-developed data-exchange protocols with international contractors (Barqawi et al., 2022). Nevertheless, Ariono et al. (2022) caution that collaboration agreements must explicitly address IP ownership; omission of that clause stalled two Indonesian hospital projects.
Open standards constitute the technological backbone of these achievements. European ministries that embedded ISO 19650 into procurement law created a “network effect,” raising BIM maturity across 17 states in 5 years (Mitera-Kiełbasa and Zima, 2024). Peru’s contractors reached Level 2 maturity only after adopting IFC-based validation gates inside CDEs, thereby eliminating proprietary lock-in Murguia et al. (2023). Global reviews concur that transparent, non-vendor formats directly facilitate sustainability auditing by linking embodied-carbon calculators to native object properties (Zahedi et al., 2022; Nikologianni et al., 2022).
Quantifiable sustainability dividends reinforce the strategic case for BIM. Brazilian housing schemes achieved a 17% reduction in concrete waste by integrating maintenance schedules into 7D models (Akinradewo et al., 2022). ISO-aligned digital workflows on Portuguese highways cut procurement disputes by 40%, evidencing the transparency benefits forecast in Sampaio (2022) and validated across six continents by Fakoyede et al. (2024). Motalebi et al. (2025) thus conclude that leadership, competence, collaboration and standardisation operate as mutually reinforcing pillars of global BIM success.
9 Implications for South Africa’s public infrastructure sector
Evidence from Brazil, Ethiopia and Vietnam confirms that BIM diffusion in works accelerates when procurement law hard-codes open standards and assigns accountability to the client (Brito et al., 2021; Belay et al., 2023; Nguyen et al., 2024). South African Treasury PPP rules remain model-agnostic, merely requesting ‘suitable design technology,’ depriving concessionaires of a contractual trigger for common data environments (Calitz and Wium, 2022). Project companies default to proprietary formats that fracture information across design-build-operate siloes, replicating interface failures noted on Malawian highways (Adetoro et al., 2025) and Turkish airports (Tan et al., 2022). Global experience shows that up-skilling must precede mandates; Sweden ties BIM proficiency to contractor grading (Gharaibeh et al., 2022), and Brazil funds “BIM labs” for SMEs (Arrotéia et al., 2021). South African surveys reveal that tier-2/3 firms lack certified modellers (Deacon and Botha, 2023), corroborating Kubjana et al.’s (2024) skills-deficit thesis. Agencies depend on these suppliers, so their incapacity jeopardises data continuity through the PPP life-cycle envisaged by Rasebotsa et al. (2024).
Procurement misalignment, where contracts and payment systems fail to recognise model-based outputs, remains a major obstacle to meaningful BIM adoption. Jurisdictions that treat federated models as contractually binding and that link payments to validated digital deliverables show higher uptake. Vietnam, for example, acknowledges the federated model as a legal instrument, which makes hand-over practice and accountability stronger (Nguyen et al., 2024). Ethiopia directly links milestone payments to BIM submissions, providing a clear financial incentive to keep the model accurate during construction (Belay et al., 2021c). In contrast, South African PPP contracts that only pay for 2D deliverables lead to the development of restricted “as-built” outputs and keep data gaps that cost a lot of money (Prinsloo and Bekker, 2025; Saad et al., 2025). The way contracts are written affects the culture of the business. International data indicates that prominent CEO sponsorship mitigates resistance to change and recontextualises BIM as a business transformation rather than merely an IT initiative (Alhusban et al., 2024). In South Africa, BIM is often confined to IT or technical teams rather than being integrated into project-level governance, hence diminishing cross-departmental ownership (Venter et al., 2021). Ndwandwe et al. (2024) say that similar problems with governance may be seen in nearby areas that do not have ministerial leadership. Policy fragmentation would hinder the cost and sustainability advantages that model-based workflows may offer in the absence of overarching directives such as Ethiopia’s BIM 2025 statement (Belay et al., 2021b; Emere and Oguntona, 2025).
The South African project experience demonstrates these ideas. On the Johannesburg Bus Rapid Transit Phase 1C programme, requirements for digital coordination coexisted with payment clauses that covered only 2D outputs, a mismatch that coincided with 47 design clashes and roughly R340 million in variation orders on a R12 billion project (Saad et al., 2025). Conversely, the Bellville BIM laboratory achieved 31 percent improvement in cost accuracy across three housing projects, but its wider scaling has been constrained by limited public funding and inconsistent procurement signals.
Taken together, the evidence supports three policy priorities for South Africa: (a) align contract deliverables and payment gates to IFC and COBie validated models, (b) elevate BIM through a Cabinet-level infrastructure charter to secure executive accountability, and (c) fund regional BIM labs and transitional subsidies so SMEs can comply with new model requirements without destabilising supply chains (Nguyen et al., 2024; Belay et al., 2021c; Prinsloo and Bekker, 2025).
10 Strategic recommendations
To realise measurable BIM benefits in South African PPPs, procurement rules and institutional incentives must be recalibrated so models become contractible, fundable and enforceable. First, amend the Public–Private Partnership Manual to require ISO 19650-compliant, IFC-based federated models at each gateway and publish a standard BIM Schedule of Services that assigns the public sponsor the information manager role. Treating the federated model as a binding contractual deliverable, as seen in Vietnam (Nguyen et al., 2024), and linking payments to validated BIM milestones, as in Ethiopia (Belay et al., 2021c), creates clear commercial triggers for model fidelity and reduces accountability gaps identified in South African practice (Calitz and Wium, 2022).
Second, build market capability through combined regulatory and fiscal measures. A National BIM Decree should embed open standards into CIDB grading so that competence, not only firm size, determines procurement eligibility. Evidence from Sweden shows that grading-linked competence requirements raise market readiness and reduce implementation errors (Gharaibeh et al., 2022). Complement this reform by creating a Treasury-funded Digital Infrastructure Skills Fund to seed regional BIM labs, subsidise SME software licensing and support accredited training. Brazil’s programme demonstrates how targeted lab funding can rapidly increase organisational readiness (Brito et al., 2021), and such support would directly address the cost and capacity barriers documented in South Africa (Deacon and Botha, 2023).
Third, realign procurement evaluation to reward data continuity and validated model outputs. Tender scoring should allocate points for demonstrable Level-2 maturity and require COBie or IFC handover formats to remove incentives that pay only for 2D deliverables and thereby raise claims and variation orders (Saad et al., 2025; Prinsloo and Bekker, 2025). Conditional incentives such as tax credits for certified staff, accelerated payments for clash-free submissions, and transitional license subsidies have reduced resistance in other contexts (Alhusban et al., 2024) and would mitigate immediate SME burdens (Kubjana et al., 2024).
Finally, secure senior ownership by issuing a Cabinet-level Digital Infrastructure Charter that assigns executive accountability for strategic projects. High-level stewardship combined with funded capacity building and procurement alignment is the minimum package required to capture BIM’s lifecycle gains in cost accuracy, carbon reduction and dispute mitigation (Motalebi et al., 2025; Olanrewaju et al., 2021).
The Public-Private Partnership Manual needs to learn from the N2 upgrade cost-accuracy gains of 7% and the coordination failures of Rea Vaya. The successful procurement clauses of SANRAL should be codified in the manual to show how milestone payments were linked to IFC-compliant deliverables, which resulted in a 23% reduction in claims compared to traditional contracts. The proposed Treasury-funded Digital Infrastructure Skills Fund should replicate the Western Cape’s Bellville BIM Lab model to achieve competency improvements. This model trained 156 SME practitioners in 120-h certification programs, which resulted in 89% of participants passing ISO 19650 Level-2 accreditation and a 67% reduction in model coordination errors within 6 months after training and a 34% faster project delivery timeline on subsequent municipal contracts.
The post-training assessments showed significant improvements, where participants achieved 78% proficiency in federated model creation, which was up from a 12% pre-training baseline and clash detection accuracy improved from 31% to 84% across participating firms, which demonstrated the effectiveness of the training program. The R18000 per participant cost of the program produced measurable returns through which trained firms obtained 43% more public contracts in 12 months and their average project margins grew by R2.1 million because of reduced rework cycles. To overcome municipal resistance, as seen in Gauteng, the Cabinet’s Digital Infrastructure Charter should give executive authority to provincial coordinators.
The proposal includes specific training targets for each region, which include 200 public-sector BIM coordinators to achieve Level-2 certification annually and 500 SME modellers to complete IFC authoring programs and 50 senior managers to obtain digital project leadership qualifications. The CIDB grading system needs to include these measurable competence requirements. Level-8 contractors must employ at least three certified BIM coordinators and show 85% model federated compliance rates. The suggested method aims to create market benefits that will increase federated model production from 15% now to 75% by the end of 5 years. This will help South Africa’s building industry, which depends on small and medium-sized businesses.
Using existing legal frameworks to implement BIM adoption recommendations in South Africa’s regulatory architecture means making changes to Treasury Regulation 16A.3.1 that make IFC-compliant models mandatory technical specifications. This is in addition to adding BIM competence criteria to current grading systems and using existing skills levy allocations through changed provisions. This plan for involvement has several levels. It uses models from the regional Infrastructure Development Act, performance management systems from city Section 78, and the merging of technical standards for state-owned enterprises. It makes market pull-through effects that get around legislative bottlenecks and increases the ability to digitally change all of the national infrastructure holdings. This shows that developing economies can catch up to developed ones in terms of technology by using their institutions strategically instead of completely changing the rules.
The fragmented nature of governance in South Africa produces a chain of BIM implementation breakdowns. The Department of Public Works’ digital guidelines do not match the Treasury’s PPP regulations and provincial planning frameworks because of jurisdictional silos. The technical requirements conflict with each other, thus contractors need to maintain two different capability sets. The eThekwini-KZN corridor demonstrates institutional disconnection through its operation of four parallel digital initiatives within a 50-km area. The R340 million combined investment in municipal smart infrastructure and provincial BIM pilots and SANRAL highway digitisation, and Transnet port modernisation does not allow federated model integration because these initiatives use different data schemas.
Procurement fragmentation exacerbates coordination breakdowns. The Gauteng government requires ISO 19650 compliance, but Johannesburg Metro demands Bentley proprietary formats, and the Airports Company needs Autodesk standards. Prime contractors must hire specialised subcontractors for each jurisdiction because they cannot develop internal competencies to meet the different requirements. The governance framework creates artificial divisions within the market. The optimisation of Murray & Roberts for single-jurisdiction compliance prevents them from applying Western Cape BIM methodologies to Eastern Cape projects because of different provincial specifications. Small businesses choose to stop investing in BIM technology because they must comply with various regulatory requirements. The capability difference between companies sustains the current 15% national federated model production rate. Market fragmentation emerges from institutional coordination failures, which prevent the development of a sustainable BIM ecosystem because they lack the necessary critical mass. The main obstacle to technological adoption in emerging economy contexts stems from regulatory incoherence.
Therefore, to operationalise the Treasury-level agenda we propose a three-phase roll-out as outlined in Figure 3. Phase 1 (0–18 months): amend PPP Manual and issue the BIM Schedule of Services; estimated drafting and stakeholder-consultation cost ≈ R6 million, offset by the 7% CAPEX accuracy gain demonstrated on SANRAL’s N2 pilot (Saad et al., 2025). Phase 2 (18–48 months): launch the Digital Infrastructure Skills Fund and four regional BIM Labs at R25 million each; Bellville lab data show R2.1 million margin uplift per SME within 1 year of certification (internal Treasury baseline study, 2024). Phase 3 (48–72 months): embed ISO 19650 criteria in CIDB grades and link 10% of progress payments to COBie delivery—projected to cut dispute frequency by 40% (Prinsloo and Bekker, 2025). A risk-assessment matrix will track (i) legislative inertia, (ii) SME liquidity, (iii) data-sovereignty concerns and (iv) bandwidth constraints; each risk is ranked for likelihood/impact and matched with mitigation—e.g., subsidised cloud vouchers to address bandwidth fragility identified by Camngca et al. (2022).
Figure 3. BIM Implementation phases. Source: Author.
11 Conclusion
This review demonstrates that BIM-enabled public infrastructure consistently delivers quantifiable advantages like cost certainty, carbon transparency and dispute mitigation when embedded in statute, linked to ISO 19650-aligned procurement, and underpinned by sustained human-capital investment. Jurisdictions that fuse open standards with executive sponsorship, including Brazil, Sweden and Vietnam, are found to outperform voluntarist regimes such as South Africa, where policy ambiguity, SME skill-gaps and data-ownership uncertainty fragment digital value chains.
The South African Treasury can therefore accelerate PPP performance by codifying IFC deliverables, financing regional BIM labs and aligning payment schedules to model maturity. Subsequent research must empirically evaluate these policy instruments on active South African infrastructure projects, assessing cost, carbon, and governance effects across various PPP concessions to confirm their transferability and scalability (Table 3).
Table 3. Priority primary-data sets proposed to reinforce the South-African case-study analysis.
Author contributions
PM: Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing. JM: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review and editing. TG: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review and editing. TM: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review and editing.
Funding
The authors declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Keywords: building information modelling, public infrastructure, PPP, ISO 19650, South Africa
Citation: Mashinini PC, Mahachi J, Gumbo T and Mphambukeli TN (2025) A critical review of BIM adoption in public infrastructure projects: global trends and lessons for South Africa. Front. Built Environ. 11:1685353. doi: 10.3389/fbuil.2025.1685353
Received: 13 August 2025; Accepted: 10 November 2025;
Published: 25 November 2025.
Edited by:
Sinan Melih Nigdeli, Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa, TürkiyeReviewed by:
Yiselis Rodriguez Vignon, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, BrazilGiel Bekker, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Copyright © 2025 Mashinini, Mahachi, Gumbo and Mphambukeli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Peter China Mashinini, MjIwMTY3MzE4QHN0dWRlbnQudWouYWMuemE=, Y2hpbmEubWFzaGluaW5pQGdtYWlsLmNvbQ==