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The application of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in fire protection discipline has been sufficiently proved to be useful, but has encountered many barriers in China. Among which, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are considered sensitive to adoption costs and external funding support, play a critical role in the BIM adoption process in fire protection discipline. Therefore, identifying and analyzing the barriers of BIM application are essential to help small- and medium-sized fire protection enterprises to overcome these barriers. In this study, semantic analysis, which includes word frequency analysis and coword analysis, based on literature review was utilized to identify the main barriers. 20 main barriers, which were classified into software, people, organization, and environment group, were obtained. Then, Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM) approach and Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) analysis were utilized to hierarchically analyze and categorize the main barriers of BIM application in Chinese SMFEs. The findings revealed that the lack of external support and the lack of BIM laws and regulations applicable to fire protection discipline are the key barriers in general for the application of BIM in SMFEs. For the barriers at the enterprise level, through further analysis and discussion based on barriers in the people and organization clusters, the lack of funding support for proper BIM training and the lack of organization culture support were concluded as the key barriers of BIM application inside the scope of SMFEs. According to 80-20 principle, more effort should be focused on the key barriers to gain maximum management effect. The research result categorizes the barriers for easy intervention of fire protection enterprises' managers and policymakers. It contributes to the nascent studies of BIM application and provides guidance for the application of BIM in fire protection discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]