Sogo Abiola Oyesode^1,, Victor U. Achime², Steve B. Jayeoba¹

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the narrative of work globally till date. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the deadly infection depends on the level of exposure risk for transmission. This has resulted in several work place preventive and control guidelines which led to the popularity of the Work from Home (WFH) initiative with over 9 months of the year 2020 spent in lock down working from home globally. Many organizations recorded significant operational cost savings with the WFH system, hence the reluctance of most organizations to fully revert to the in-office work model after the lockdown was relaxed. Some organizations still operate a hybrid model till date. This study provides an insight into the role of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Cloud Computing in the successful implementation of a hybrid work model amongst Architectural firms. It also examines the readiness of architectural firms to operate the hybrid work model and the possible barriers to its successful implementation. The survey questionnaire method was adopted for data collection with the target population consisting of architectural firms in Lagos State, Nigeria. Findings revealed that the utilization level of the cloud-based file storage and sharing system within the BIM work process is still very low amongst architectural firms with less than 20% of the respondents actively operating on a cloud-based server. The relative index (RI) analysis deployed to rank the factors delaying the transition of firms to a cloud-based system revealed high setup and maintenance cost as the highest factor with a mean score of 4.74 and RI value of 0.95. Having in mind other inherent collaborative benefits of the cloud-based data systems, the study in conclusion makes a case for the need for architectural firms to invest in their office IT Infrastructure knowing fully well that investment made is recoverable with time from the daily operational cost savings that the hybrid work model offers. The study recommends greater awareness of the cloud server system amongst architectural firms’ top-level management.

Architectural Firms, BIM, Cloud Computing, COVID Pandemic, Hybrid Work