Abstract: Construction industry is that area which has indeed experienced tremendous growth over the past decade. As it is, there are numerous challenges that the industry face today. Adequate management identifies itself as a one for all solution to most of the problems faced by the industry. A brief timeline of research and development activities that could be grouped under this title, GIS based 4D modeling for project management, also called Building Information Modeling or BIM popularly has been furnished in this paper. As the traditional instruments of management had very limited linkage with the spatial aspects of construction work, a concept of four dimensional modeling was proposed. With the advent of GIS, enhanced spatial and database management capabilities could be made use of for the purpose. Towards the end, the benefit of carrying out the modelling and management task throughout in a single environment has been discussed, suggesting GIS framework to be an excellent platform that could serve the purpose, stressing out the relevance of an open source GIS package in today’s world, recommending an open source GIS environment for the work which would be an added advantage.

Keywords: 4D modelling, 3D visualization, GIS, Construction management, BIM, Planning and scheduling, Open source GIS.