A Scientometric Review and Metasynthesis of Building Information Modelling (BIM) Research in Africa

: Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been gaining widespread adoption in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry across the globe. Consequently, several research studies have attempted to construct a holistic review of the increasing BIM publications to identify the development trend using manual review, scientometric review, bibliometric review, or latent semantic review. These extant studies have often adopted a global view of the development despite the adoption of BIM varying across ﬁrms, countries, and continents. This approach is often regarded as not representative of the BIM development in countries and continents at the infancy stage. As BIM is still at the germinating stage of development in Africa and previous reviews are unrepresentative of BIM development in the AEC industry of Africa. This paper aims to present a scientometric review and metasynthesis of BIM development in the African AEC industry to explore the intellectual evolution of BIM, the status quo of BIM across the regions, and any potential barriers hindering BIM proliferation. The review ﬁndings revealed a varying level of BIM growth, with North Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa leading the research development, whilst East Africa and Central Africa are slightly lagging behind. Additionally, the major challenges facing BIM adoption was found as people / process-related barriers. This study has provided valuable insights into BIM development and application in the growing African AEC industry.


Background of Study
Over the years, there have been reports regarding the low productivity in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. This is partly due to the complex nature of the industry and the fragmentation of the activities. Latham [1] and Egan [2] asserted the fragmentation and the need for a more collaborative and integrated industry. Albeit, the industry is changing, however, the shift towards an integrated industry is slow and not moving as expected [3]. The AEC industry is also synonymous with slow implementation of innovation when compared to the manufacturing industry; thus, it is not surprising that the construction industry is lagging behind the manufacturing industry, transportation industry, among other industries [4].
Paradigms and technologies have emerged and been channelled towards achieving an integrated industry and improving the state of the industry over the last decades. Lean Practices, Sustainability, Prefabrication, Building Information Modelling (BIM), Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Total Quality Management (TQM), among others are being adopted and implemented in the construction industry to combat some of the major challenges encountered in the industry and affect its capability to achieve value for money. BIM adoption and implementation in Africa is slow and lagging that of developed countries [62]. Table 1 shows the level of awareness of BIM in Africa from extant studies. These studies adopted questionnaire survey and the number of respondents is low (this could be related to the low level of awareness in the African AEC), as shown in Table 1. Despite the low number of respondents in these studies, it tends to portray the level of awareness in these countries. The high number of BIM publications from Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa equally matches the high level of awareness in in these countries [62]. However, the level of awareness does not imply the level of implementation. Awareness is a stage in BIM innovation diffusion and it differs from BIM implementation [70]. The level of BIM implementation is usually lower when compared to the level of awareness, because not all informed individuals or organizations would implement BIM due to challenges and bottlenecks. The level of awareness in Cameroon is not reflective of the real situation, as the purposive sampling technique was adopted. Expectedly, all of the respondents are aware of BIM, because they are all BIM users or adopters [71]. There is a dearth of BIM report as regards the adoption and implementation in Africa, contrary to what is obtainable in the developed countries where industry reports, such as the National BIM Survey (NBS) reports and McGraw Hills, reports are available.

Research Methodology
The BIM publications were retrieved from the Scopus search engine or database using the search query "BIM" or "Building Information Model" with no year limitation and the output was 13,835 documents. The documents were limited to papers that were published in English and related to construction management in order to refine the output, as done in similar studies [58,59,78]. The filter option of 'country/territory' of the Scopus search database was used to limit the documents to those related to the area (Africa) under study. The Scopus database was adopted because of its wider coverage [61,79]. Similarly, all of the documents were given consideration, as done by Hosseini, Maghrebi, Akbarnezhad, Martek, and Arashpour [61] to avoid 'publication bias' [80,81]. This is also necessary, as BIM research is still at an infant stage on this continent. A total of 93 documents were adopted after the final refine and review of the abstracts. This study adopted a scientometric review and metasynthesis to analyse the documents; and Figure 1 portrays the outline of research design. Metasynthesis was conducted in order to identify the barriers that lead to the low level of adoption and implementation of BIM in Africa.

Scientometric review
It is a technique that involves the visualization and analysis of a large corpus of paper to present the intellectual evolution and mapping of structural pattern in a research domain. Although a smaller quantity of documents (as BIM research in Africa is still at the early stage) was used for the visualization in this study, the benefit is that all the adopted documents were critically reviewed and    The 93 documents (data set) from Scopus search engine was used for the scientometric review and the data set was refined to documents (five documents) that meet the criteria set for the metasynthesis in this study. Thus, two closely related data sets were used, as depicted in Figure 1.

Scientometric Review
It is a technique that involves the visualization and analysis of a large corpus of paper to present the intellectual evolution and mapping of structural pattern in a research domain. Although a smaller quantity of documents (as BIM research in Africa is still at the early stage) was used for the visualization in this study, the benefit is that all the adopted documents were critically reviewed and were in tandem with the research aim. This serves as an edge over a large corpus of paper, which might contain some irrelevant papers that would contaminate the findings.
This method has gained widespread usage for review of domains such as green building [82,83], offsite construction [84], public-private partnership [85], sustainability [86], and BIM [58]. Other common approaches are latent semantic review [54], bibliometric review [55][56][57]60,87], content analysis [88], and literature review [50,51], which have also been adopted in various domains. This study employs the use of VOS viewer (version 1.6.10) for the scientometric review, because it allows for an importation of data set from Scopus and it has been used in related studies. It is an easy to use software that employs a distance-based approach in its visualization [89]. Thus, the distance between the nodes in the visualization represents the relatedness of the nodes. Normalization is performed for the differences between the nodes by default using association strength normalization [89]. The clustering of the network by VOS viewer adopted the smart local moving algorithm and items belonging to the same cluster are given the same colour. It also offers a full counting methodology and fractional counting methodology for the visualization of the network. However, fractional counting methodology was adopted, as recommended [90]. Author network, co-citation network (co-author citation and document citation), and co-occurring keywords citation are the techniques used in this study.

Metasynthesis
Metasynthesis is synthetization of analyses and a form of metanalysis. Metanalysis is the analysis of analyses, which compares and consolidates the findings of studies to create new knowledge [91]. It has been well adopted in disciplines, such as economics, medicine, psychology, and political science because of the nature of their research. However, metanalysis has not been well adopted in construction management due to the challenges related to aggregating studies [92]. This study employs metasynthesis [93] to synthesize selected empirical findings of BIM publications in Africa. The primary goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the findings through synthetization and not to test the hypothesis or examine dependencies between model variables [7], as often done in metanalysis [91].
The criteria for selecting the studies for metasynthesis are studies on BIM challenges that are conducted in English from each of the five regions in Africa that adopted a questionnaire survey and were analysed using the Relative Importance Index (RII) or Mean Item Score (MIS). Additionally, only studies within the last five years were considered as challenges or barriers change with time. A maximum of two documents was selected from each of the regions; however, only five documents (with a total of 95 barriers) met the criteria. Many extant studies do not provide adequate information regarding the methodology and often adopt dichotomous questions as against the Likert scale. Table 2 shows the studies selected for metasynthesis, which comprise five different countries and covering four regions of the continent. None of the studies from Central Africa meets the set criteria.
The RII and MIS are widely used statistical analysis in construction management to evaluate the importance of a set of variables [86].
where: W = weighting given to each factor by the respondents and ranging from 1 to 5, A = highest weight, and N = total number of respondents.

Annual Publication Trend in Africa
Albeit, the first BIM publication dated back to 2005 [58], the first paper from Africa dated back to 2010, as shown in Figure 2. There has been an increase in BIM publications from Africa ever since the first publication in 2010. The increase in the publications is synonymous with the global growth in BIM publications [58,61]; however, the growth in Africa is slow. There is expected to be a continuous increase in BIM research on the continent as the BIM is just gaining awareness and proliferation [62,69].

Annual publication trend in Africa
Albeit, the first BIM publication dated back to 2005 [58], the first paper from Africa dated back to 2010, as shown in Figure 2. There has been an increase in BIM publications from Africa ever since the first publication in 2010. The increase in the publications is synonymous with the global growth in BIM publications [58,61]; however, the growth in Africa is slow. There is expected to be a continuous increase in BIM research on the continent as the BIM is just gaining awareness and proliferation [62,69].  Figure 3 shows the distribution of the papers across the countries and regions in Africa. North Africa has the highest number of publications of 52 documents from three major countries (Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria), followed by West Africa with 26 documents from three major countries (Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d'Ivoire); whilst, Southern Africa has the third highest publication, with 13 documents from two major countries (South Africa and Zambia), and the last is Central Africa, with two documents from Cameroon and the Central African Republic.  Figure 3 shows the distribution of the papers across the countries and regions in Africa. North Africa has the highest number of publications of 52 documents from three major countries (Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria), followed by West Africa with 26 documents from three major countries (Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d'Ivoire); whilst, Southern Africa has the third highest publication, with 13 documents

Visualization
This section presents the result of the visualization for the 93 documents from Scopus using VOSviewer.

Co-authorship network
This is the network for the collaboration of researchers on BIM. It presents the collaboration between the researchers around their research areas in clusters. A total of 205 researchers authored the 93 documents and Table 3 shows the list of the top authors. Table 4 shows the co-authorship network, with a total of 334 links and 137.50 total link strength. Total Link Strength (TLS) is the strength of the links of an item to other items [89]. The overlay visualization of the generated network is presented to reflect the average year of publication of the authors and their cluster. The cluster around Marzouk Muhammed and Oyedele Lukman stand out, and it reflects their research group and collaboration between them and other researchers. The average year of publication from these two groups is between 2016 to 2017, as shown in Figure 4. Authors, such as Ibem Eziyi [97], Ganiyu Amuda-Yusuf [98], and Ekemode Benjamin [99], with the yellow coloured items, are authors with recent publications in this area.

Visualization
This section presents the result of the visualization for the 93 documents from Scopus using VOSviewer.

Co-Authorship Network
This is the network for the collaboration of researchers on BIM. It presents the collaboration between the researchers around their research areas in clusters. A total of 205 researchers authored the 93 documents and Table 3 shows the list of the top authors. Table 4 shows the co-authorship network, with a total of 334 links and 137.50 total link strength. Total Link Strength (TLS) is the strength of the links of an item to other items [89]. The overlay visualization of the generated network is presented to reflect the average year of publication of the authors and their cluster. The cluster around Marzouk Muhammed and Oyedele Lukman stand out, and it reflects their research group and collaboration between them and other researchers. The average year of publication from these two groups is between 2016 to 2017, as shown in Figure 4. Authors, such as Ibem Eziyi [97], Ganiyu Amuda-Yusuf [98], and Ekemode Benjamin [99], with the yellow coloured items, are authors with recent publications in this area.
The generated network is porous, scattered, and not well connected. This connotes the infant stage of BIM research on the continent and there seems to be no well-defined connections between most of the researchers and their research areas. The generated network is porous, scattered, and not well connected. This connotes the infant stage of BIM research on the continent and there seems to be no well-defined connections between most of the researchers and their research areas.

Co-occurring keywords network
This is the network of co-occurring keywords in the documents and they reflect the themes of the research publications [82]. The 93 documents contain a total of 800 keywords and the minimum occurrences of keywords was set to 2 to avoid the visualizing of less relevant keywords. Only 137 keywords meet the set threshold, and these were visualized, as shown in Figure 5, with 817 links and total link strength of 199.5. Table 4 shows the frequently occurred keyword in the 93 analysed documents. The overlay visualization of the keywords is as shown in Figure 5

Co-Occurring Keywords Network
This is the network of co-occurring keywords in the documents and they reflect the themes of the research publications [82]. The 93 documents contain a total of 800 keywords and the minimum occurrences of keywords was set to 2 to avoid the visualizing of less relevant keywords. Only 137 keywords meet the set threshold, and these were visualized, as shown in Figure 5, with 817 links and total link strength of 199.5. Table 4 shows the frequently occurred keyword in the 93 analysed documents. The overlay visualization of the keywords is as shown in Figure 5 Keywords, such as optimization, energy conservation, indoor environmental quality, thermal comfort, and environmental design relate to sustainability and the average year of the publications that relate to it is 2015. Similarly, keywords, such as adoption, technology acceptance model, performance of buildings, construction sites, and construction activities relate to the adoption and implementation of BIM and the average year of the publications relating to this theme is between 2017 to 2018. A Pearson product-moment correlation was run to determine the relationship between the occurrences of the keywords and the links to other keywords. It shows that there is a very strong and significant positive correlation (r = 0.983, p = 0.00) between the occurrences of the keywords and it links to other similar keywords.

Author Co-Citation Network
A total of 4406 authors were cited in the documents and a minimum number of citations of an author was set to five and 154 of the authors meet the threshold. Table 5 shows the list of top-cited authors in the documents. Figure 6 shows the density visualization of the network, with 528 links and 628.39 total link strength. The network coupled with the table shows the authors whose works are frequently cited on the continent. These are often researchers with influential works in the BIM research domain. The diversity in the location of cited authors shows that BIM research is global [58]. The density map shows that Eastman Chuck, Sacks Rafael, and Oyedele Lukumon are influential in the network.

Document co-citation network
This is the network of cited references in the documents that were analysed. It provides a similar trend of the research themes and related works are often cited in documents. Table 6 provides a list of top-cited documents and Figure 7 indicates the density visualization of the network, with 131 links and 41.50 total link strength. A total of 3,064 references were cited in the 93 documents and a minimum number of two citations was set to visualize the network, of which only 52 meet the set threshold.

Document Title Links
Bryde, et al. [10] The project benefits of building information modelling (BIM) 15 Gu and London [50] Understanding and facilitating BIM adoption in the AEC industry 11 Sebastian [100] Changing roles of the clients, architects and contractors through BIM 11 Figure 6. Author co-citation network of BIM publications.

Document Co-Citation Network
This is the network of cited references in the documents that were analysed. It provides a similar trend of the research themes and related works are often cited in documents. Table 6 provides a list of top-cited documents and Figure 7 indicates the density visualization of the network, with 131 links and 41.50 total link strength. A total of 3064 references were cited in the 93 documents and a minimum number of two citations was set to visualize the network, of which only 52 meet the set threshold.

Document Title Links
Bryde, et al. [10] The project benefits of building information modelling (BIM) 15 Gu and London [50] Understanding and facilitating BIM adoption in the AEC industry 11 Sebastian [100] Changing roles of the clients, architects and contractors through BIM 11 Akinade, et al. [101] Waste minimisation through deconstruction: A BIM based Deconstructability Assessment Score (BIM-DAS) 10 Wong, et al. [102] Attributes of building information modelling implementations in various countries 6 Ekanayake and Ofori [103] Building waste assessment score: design-based tool 5 Succar [9] Building information modelling framework: A research and delivery foundation for industry stakeholders 5 Eadie, et al. [104] BIM implementation throughout the UK construction project lifecycle: An analysis 5 Becerik-Gerber, et al. [48] Application areas and data requirements for BIM-enabled facilities management 4 Davis [105] Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology 3 Buildings 2019, 9, x FOR PEER REVIEW 14 of 24 Ekanayake and Ofori [103] Building waste assessment score: design-based tool 5 Succar [9] Building information modelling framework: A research and delivery foundation for industry stakeholders 5 Eadie, et al. [104] BIM implementation throughout the UK construction project lifecycle: An analysis 5 Becerik-Gerber, et al.

Metasynthesis of BIM research studies on challenges or barriers to adoption
The selected studies stem from five different countries from four different regions in Africa. The respondents in these studies are professionals and stakeholders in the African AEC industry. The total number of items is 95 from 358 respondents at 63.03% response rate, which is more than 30% minimum threshold [106]. The descriptive statistics for the selected studies are elicited in Table 7.

Metasynthesis of BIM Research Studies on Challenges or Barriers to Adoption
The selected studies stem from five different countries from four different regions in Africa. The respondents in these studies are professionals and stakeholders in the African AEC industry. The total number of items is 95 from 358 respondents at 63.03% response rate, which is more than 30% minimum threshold [106]. The descriptive statistics for the selected studies are elicited in Table 7. Following the same procedure by Oesterreich and Teuteberg [7], the barriers in each of the studies were assigned to 20 major barriers and three categories (Economic-related barriers, People/Process-related barriers, and Technology-related barriers). For example, 'Lack of awareness of BIM by Stakeholders' [76], 'Lack of awareness' [95], and 'Lack of publicity and awareness' [74] are assigned to 'Lack of awareness' as a major barrier and are categorised under people/process-related barriers. Other major barriers are 'High cost of implementation', 'Lack of technical know-how' 'Lack of clear BIM benefits evaluation', 'Lack of government support', 'Lack of training' ' Lack of collaboration', 'Resistance to change', 'Lack of investment on BIM', 'Lack of government support', 'Lack of demand', 'Interoperability', 'Lack of BIM standards', ' Contractual uncertainty', 'Lack of expertise', 'Inadequate infrastructure', 'Legal risk', ' Lack of collaboration', 'Lack of management support', 'Lack of market readiness', and 'Implementation slow down productivity'. These were then categorised into Economic-related barriers, People/Process-related barriers, or Technology-related barriers. This is done in order to aggregate the statistical data before applying cluster analysis [7].
The collected data is then aggregated (ΣW, AN, and N) for each of the major barriers, and categories using Equation (4) and the relative importance index are calculated using Equation (1), as presented in Table 8.

People/Process-Related Barriers
Building Information Modelling is a technology-oriented process that needs stakeholders (people) and processes (policies) to function. However, from the synthesised studies, the challenges that are related to people/process are the most reported (47 times) out of the 95 barriers in the studies and they are the most severe with RII of 0.731. Challenges, such as lack of training, lack of awareness, and lack of demand from clients (public, private clients, institutional clients, and individual clients) are severe in a developing region, like Africa. These challenges need to be checked for the proliferation of BIM.

Economic-Related Barriers
The economic-related barriers were aggregated with RII of 0.707. The cost of BIM software coupled with the cost of training leads to a high cost of BIM implementation. BIM is also often seen to pose risk, because there are doubts among the stakeholders regarding the positive return on investment of BIM.
Thus, most stakeholders are still resisting change and are unwilling to invest in BIM technology for economic reasons.

Technology-Related Barriers
0.687 is the aggregated RII for the technology related barriers. These barriers include interoperability issues, which often hinder effective collaboration between stakeholders, lack of BIM standards, and inadequate infrastructure, such as internet access and power supply, which are often epileptic in most countries on this continent [107]. Other barriers include legal risk that is related to adopting BIM in contract and lack of technical knowledge.

Discussion of Review Findings
The BIM research on this continent has been on the increase, evidently from the increase in the number of publications over the last few years. There are more publications from North Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa than East Africa and Central Africa. Countries, such as Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa, stand out in the BIM research on this continent. However, less than 20% (10) of the countries in Africa (54) have research publications that are indexed on Scopus. This further shows that BIM diffusion in Africa is still at an early stage and this resonates with the findings of Jung and Lee [63], Ogwueleka and Ikediashi [69], and Saka and Chan [62]. In most of the represented countries in this study, the level of awareness is more than 50%, except for Libya, Zambia, and Cameroon (the level of awareness is not representative, as purposive sampling was adopted in the study selected from this country). Consequently, BIM awareness is increasing in these countries, albeit at a very slow pace in Africa as a whole. The level of awareness in Egypt stands out (above 90%) and this could explain the high number of publications from this country. Nigeria also follows the same trend, with a high number of publications and awareness in the country's AEC industry. Thus, there seems to be a relationship in the research and development of BIM and the level of awareness in the AEC industry. However, a high level of awareness does not connote a high level of implementation.
The visualized author network corroborated the fact that BIM research is still in the infancy stage on the continent. There are only two established clusters with other researchers that are scattered around and this signifies the lack of collaboration between researchers on this continent. The author network also depicted that most of the research in recent years on this continent are from the researchers scattered around the network. The co-occurring words relate around sustainability and BIM adoption and implementation in a similar way to the cited references. The research in this area leans towards adopting theoretical lenses, as shown by the keywords, such as 'Technology acceptance model' and the citation of documents, such as Davis, et al. [108] and Davis [105]. This differs from the findings of Hosseini, Maghrebi, Akbarnezhad, Martek, and Arashpour [61] that identified the lack of theoretical lenses in BIM studies and the greater focus on the technology aspect of BIM. Authors, such as Eastman Chuck, Sacks Rafael, and Azhar Salman, are most cited authors on this continent. This is similar to the findings of Saka and Chan [62], Zhao [58], and Hosseini, Maghrebi, Akbarnezhad, Martek, and Arashpour [61]. The diversity in the location of these top cited authors shows that BIM research is global [58]. Eastman Chuck is the most cited author, and this could be partly explained by his contributions to the BIM research and it is often tagged as 'Father or Pioneer of BIM' [62,109,110].
Metasynthesis of the five selected studies across the continent shows that people/process-related barriers are the major challenges of BIM in Africa and this reflects the process/people-oriented nature of BIM. This is followed by economic-related challenges and technology-related challenges. The people/process-related challenges include a lack of awareness, lack of training, lack of demand, lack of government support etc. Thus, there is a need for an increase in awareness that would impact the implementation of BIM in the long run. Additionally, there is a need for a change in orientation of the stakeholders in the AEC industry towards BIM; the stakeholders need to be less resistive of BIM and to adopt it. There seems to be no clear government mandate or policies regarding BIM on this continent as seen in developed countries. The BIM push on this continent leans towards a 'bottom-up' approach in the absence of government mandate.
There are inadequate empirical studies on the benefits of BIM in convincing the stakeholders to invest in BIM. Most of the stakeholders doubt the positive return on BIM investment and perceive investing in BIM as high risk. This challenge is compounded by the high cost of software, and training leading to high cost of BIM investment. The high cost of implementation is frequently reported as a major bottleneck for BIM proliferation and this could be partly explained by the high presence of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the African AEC industry. These SMEs are characterised by the limited resource to invest in BIM and perceive BIM as a risky investment. However, SMEs stand to gain more from BIM adoption and implementation than large firms due to their unique attributes [30,111]. Thus, studies of BIM in African (SMEs and large firms) context is a necessity to allay the fear of the stakeholders and for the proliferation of BIM in the African AEC industry, as the SMEs are the backbone of the economy [112]. These studies would help in integrating the 'digital-divide' [3] between 'BIM compliant' large firms and 'BIM complaint' SMEs. Technology-related challenges, such as interoperability, lack of BIM standard, and inadequate infrastructure (e.g., internet connection and power supply) are severe in hindering the BIM diffusion in the African AEC industry. Figure 8 presents the summary of the BIM development in Africa.

Conclusions
This study presented a scientometric review and metasynthesis of BIM in the African AEC by making use of BIM publications from the Scopus search engine (scientometric) and other databases (metasynthesis). It identified the publication trend over the years and the publication distribution across different countries and regions on the continent. North Africa (Egypt) has the highest number of publications and high level of BIM awareness, which differ from other regions and countries. West Africa, South Africa, and East Africa are also progressing, whilst Central Africa seems to be lagging behind in BIM adoption, implementation, and research. Process and People related

Conclusions
This study presented a scientometric review and metasynthesis of BIM in the African AEC by making use of BIM publications from the Scopus search engine (scientometric) and other databases (metasynthesis). It identified the publication trend over the years and the publication distribution across different countries and regions on the continent. North Africa (Egypt) has the highest number of publications and high level of BIM awareness, which differ from other regions and countries. West Africa, South Africa, and East Africa are also progressing, whilst Central Africa seems to be lagging behind in BIM adoption, implementation, and research. Process and People related challenges are perceived as the most severe challenges hindering the proliferation of BIM, followed by economic-related barriers and technology-related barriers. There exists a genuine need for an increase in awareness of BIM and more research studies on BIM benefits, BIM implementation, and adoption, as these would lead to an increase in the adoption and implementation of BIM. Additionally, the government impetus could help drive BIM innovation in the African AEC industry, as observed in developed countries.
The African AEC industry needs to embrace and adopt innovations, such as BIM, in order to be equipped to remedy the infrastructural deficits and prepare for the population boom on the continent during which there will be a strong demand for the AEC industry to supply infrastructure facilities more than ever. Additionally, the adoption of BIM provides several profound benefits that would be of aid to the AEC industry that is constantly facing significant challenges [113][114][115]. The adoption of innovations, such as BIM, would no longer be a need but a necessity for the survival of firms.
Despite the significance of this study, it has own limitations. The dataset that was extracted from Scopus search database was used for the analysis; therefore, the study may be affected by Scopus's coverage of publications. Also, only documents that were published in English were considered, and there may be other documents that are published in other languages. These limitations could serve as fertile areas for further research. In conclusion, BIM adoption and implementation in the African AEC industry is underrepresented in extant studies [116] when compared to those of other continents that are often made available by McGraw-Hill reports [22][23][24]117] and NBS [16]. A further area of studies could consider empirical surveys of BIM in the African AEC industry across the various regions.