Secuencia 3: presentación personal de Margarita

According to Yin (2009) a pilot case study will help to refine data collection plans with respect to both the content of the data and the procedure to be followed. The use of a pilot interview with regards to this research was to make sure the researcher made the right inquiries which reflect the specific condition of the company. The use of preliminary interview has also served the purpose. However, as part of the research procedure, a pilot interview study was also conducted at company P. It is important to note that Company P is quite different in the nature of its business as compared to the other three companies which deliver design as part of their main business which is either architecture, structure, mechanical or combination of these. Company P on the other hand focuses on two scopes of businesses which specifically focus on BIM; to be directly involved in a project as an integrated design consultancy to design, produce and manage Building Information Models and associated processes, and as a BIM implementation consultancy to assist architectural, structural and integrated design firms to implement BIM within their organisation. The latter has justified the selection of Company P as a pilot case. The justification lies on the experience of the company in assisting any organisations to be a BIM capable organisation in which suits the need of the research. Consulting various companies as an independent consultant also provides an extra advantage to select them as they have a generic idea or bird‟s eye view of what works and what may not work in implementing BIM. In addition, their bird‟s eye view was also important as it enabled them to comment the suitability of the interview questions as far as the terms and language were concerned. Since some parts of BIM are technical and at the same time most of the companies in Malaysia are

66 still at the infancy stage of BIM implementation, the alignment between the technical terms and their level of BIM understanding are therefore important in getting the right data. The alignment could only be done by consulting a company that is familiar with the situation and therefore Company P was chosen. Based on the pilot study, the researcher found that all of the questions posed were understood and easy for the interviewee to respond to.

In addition, the use of a pilot case is also needed to get an early exposure of the research process so that the research strategy can be refined. According to Yin (2009), the pilot study helps to refine the data collection plan with respect to both the content of the data and the procedure to be followed. In this regard, the pilot test is not a pre-test. The former is more involved with formatting and providing some conceptual clarification for the research design whereas the latter is more like a dress rehearsal. From the methodology perspective, a pilot study has provided some conceptual clarification for the research design. It gives explicit lessons learned for both research design and field procedures (Yin, 2009). From the pilot study experience, the researcher had anticipated problems regarding data shortage and limited access to Company P due to the nature of construction business which involves many participants and the possession of unclear project information belonging to which company. Therefore, to play safe, company P opted not to discuss the project in detail, especially when it comes to the characteristics of the project. Based on the pilot case, limitation of access in the company had been well expected in the case study research. The researcher would expect that in some future cases the respondents might refuse to participate and the researcher might rely on secondary data instead. The possibility of the researcher being unable to make a repeat visit to the company is also well predicted.

Also, as the research is dealing with management issues of the companies, the key to success for the case study lay in careful selection of respondents. It had been learned during the pilot case that the quality of the respondents is more critical than quantity in obtaining good detailed information from relevant personnel. The selected respondents should have possessed imperative knowledge and understanding on the company policies and processes. In addition to the preliminary interview to mitigate these problems, the researcher also obtained a support letter from the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB), which the researcher was collaborated with. This supporting letter improved access to the company cases due to an increased level of trust. The researcher was also very careful in selecting interview respondents. The researcher interviewed the top and middle management of each company, whenever possible. Through this strategy, though the number of respondents was limited, the researcher should be satisfied with the respondents‟ level of knowledge.

67 The researcher, however, was fully aware of the issue of respondent‟s bias. The findings from the case studies were therefore further validated with the industry focus group.