BIM-Integrated System: A Successful Alternative for Calculating Cash Flow in Large-Scale Projects

Cash flow calculation is an essential economic aspect of evaluating the success of a construction project. Strong cash flow positively impacts not only project effectiveness but also company profitability. Cash flow calculation is a good way for the contractors to avoid risks related to delay, cost overrun, or incompletion caused by financial deficits in the project’s performance. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a revolutionary technology 4.0 that has been mandated by many countries. In Vietnam, a roadmap for BIM application in the construction sector was issued in 2023. This mentions that from 2023, the application of BIM is compulsory for works in large-scale projects, specifically class I and higher public investment projects; from 2025, the application of BIM is compulsory for works in class II and higher in public investment projects, projects funded by non-public investment state capital, and PPP projects. In addition, for new investment projects funded by other capital sources, main investors are required to provide BIM files to serve for the appraisal of feasibility study reports, for construction permits, and for acceptance testing tasks. However, the Vietnamese contractors are still facing the inaccuracy of results when applying BIM technology to cash flow calculations. Therefore, this paper proposes a framework for calculating cash flow in large-scale projects by integrating BIM authoring programming, a cost estimation system, a project scheduling system, and a spreadsheet system. The expected outcome of this research is to enhance reliability in computing the project cash flow through an easier and more accurate BIM approach.