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The purpose of this paper is to use Delphi technique to assess the applicability of coupling various project delivery methods (PDMs) and contract strategies (CSs) for delivery of public building projects (PBP) in Ethiopia.

To achieve the objective of this research, an online Delphi study was designed, conducted and analyzed using various statistical procedures. Results were compared to CII’s project delivery and CS (PDCS) tool, a US-based PDM selection tool.

This study converged in the third round signifying a consensus on the importance of design–build and construction manager at risk as alternatives to design–bid–build. In addition, “controlling schedule growth” was deemed to be a major performance measure that needs to be considered for PBP in Ethiopia, a result consistent with the outcomes from CII’s PDCS tool.

Among existing studies, none to the best of the authors’ knowledge has focused on a holistic approach to identify the most appropriate pairings of PDMs and CSs for PBP which was critically needed due to the magnitude and high stakes of these projects. This research is a steppingstone toward gaining knowledge on how to approach these types of projects in fast-growing environments thirsty for new building projects such as in Ethiopia.

Building information modeling (BIM) is a process of creating an intelligent virtual model integrating project data from design to construction and operation. BIM models enhance the process of communicating the progress of construction to stakeholders and facilitate integrated project delivery, coordination and clash detection. However, barriers within the construction industry in Ethiopia has led to slow BIM adoption in the country. The aim of this paper is to identify perceived BIM barriers, provide a platform to quantify their importance and develop a regression model to link individual's personal/professional attributes to their perception of BIM barrier.

To address the objectives of this research, an online survey was developed to collect feedback from construction professionals in Ethiopia on 20 major adoption barriers extracted from a thorough review of literature. Relative importance index and strength of consensus metric were employed to identify the significance of barriers. This was then succeeded by performing exploratory factor analysis to determine the major constructs of BIM barriers which was then used to develop a multivariate regression model linking respondents' personal attributes to their perception of BIM barrier.

Results revealed the importance of project complexity and BIM maturity level in prioritizing barriers that are more relevant under various contexts. More specifically, results indicated the following study highlights: Project complexity led to higher perceived weights for lack of appropriate physical/cloud infrastructures, and a BIM standard. Higher levels of BIM maturity signified the importance of BIM internal issues such as liability, licensing and maintenance issues among other adoption barriers. Female participants tended not to consider intangibility of BIM benefits as a major barrier towards BIM adoption compared to male participants. Age of the participants turned out to be the least important factor in their prioritization of BIM perceived adoption barriers.

While many research studies have explored BIM adoption barriers in various countries around the world, none to the best of the authors' knowledge have attempted to develop a model to highlight the impact of individuals' personal/professional attributes on their perception of adoption barriers within their community which can help with prioritizing the barriers that are deemed to be more important given the characteristics of the community under study. Our result indicated the importance of BIM maturity level and project complexity in prioritizing barriers associated with BIM adoption within Ethiopia's construction industry.