Development of a governance framework for delivery of collaborative and security-minded BIM projects
This study explores secure-collaboration for BIM projects in response to concerns as to whetherproject environments concerned with critical national infrastructure are able to govern digitalsecurity-risks whilst also reconciling tensions between collaborative motives, leading to difficultiesin sharing enough information to ensure stakeholder efficiency whilst not exposing sensitivitiesand elevating security-risk. This research aims to address these issues by: Devising a conceptualprocess and data governance framework to enable secure collaboration for BIM projects. Inachieving this aim, the study captures the framework’s requirements by answering the firstresearch question: What is the nature of tensions between collaboration and security motiveswithin security-minded BIM projects that are barriers to achieving secure-collaboration? Thisquestion’s answer is central to answering the second question: What is the nature of the processand data governance framework that is required to resolve existing tensions and enable securecollaboration?This thesis captures requirements via a thorough study (primary and secondary) in the contextof security-minded BIM projects. The design-science methodology was adopted to guide theframework development and evaluation; semi-structured interviews with 13 experts were used todiagnose the tensions concerning: security-risk governance, BIM process and technologyimplementation, alongside BIM governance limitations. Based upon findings, the framework’srequirements for comprising process and data governance concepts were developed. Theframework was evaluated with 8 experts via a qualitative feedback categorisation technique toassess its capacity to facilitate secure-collaboration.The outcome of the diagnostics process revealed that tensions arise within projects due to a lackof a holistic security-risk governance approach, and a misalignment between project collaborationand security requirements. This leads to a cascade of incompatible project implementationxviiichoices, which limits the efficacy of information governance to appropriately secure critical assets,whilst diminishing collaboration capacity to ensure a timely and cost-effective project-delivery.Stakeholders are also constrained by security-measures which are not integrated with theirinformational needs, resulting in issues such as securely coordinating sensitive informationamongst partners, or professionals being unable to access information due to inaccuratesensitivity classification and clearance constraints. These tensions are also linked to divergentcultural pressures for increased digitisation and openness, versus the need for security-mindedapproaches which are accompanied by administrative, commercial and contractual burdens.These tensions are the sources of great frustration within security-minded environmentsinterviewed in effortlessly achieving secure collaboration, whereas a bleaker picture is present forthe broader AEC sector as to whether organisations can support the secure digitisation needs ofinexperienced clients and protect their assets within an evolving digital security-risk landscape.Alleviating such tensions requires clients to apply holistic security-risk governance approachesand define integrated project requirements that reconcile security, collaboration and efficiencymotives. Findings also indicate that information-flow tensions are present for professionals to beable to seamlessly share and receive only the necessary information, when and to who necessary,at an appropriate and secured level of detail. Alleviating such tensions is difficult as they are tiedto the limitations of BIM-based governance approaches utilised within practices. To resolve suchinformation-flow tensions, findings propose that the key elements to be integrated into theprocess and data governance framework are considerations for information planning, transactionand governance concepts. At an overarching level, this is by ensuring practitioners securely shareand receive only the atomic information-sets which are necessary for them to deliver high-qualityproject outcomes. The proposed framework has been validated via a high-level qualitativetechnique as the framework is conceptual in nature. Therefore, future research is required toimplement and validate the framework in real-life project settings.
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