Vertical development is the ideal solution to meet the demand of land for the fast growing urban population in India. It is the construction of tall structures such as high-rise buildings, sky scrapers and sky towers etc., rather than constructing laterally to accommodate large population in quiet a lesser area. However the construction of high-rise buildings are highly complex and requires advanced construction techniques and equipment. One of the most important requirements is the advancement in forming technology. Though the conventional or traditional method of forming high-rise building is economical, it suffers seriously on the time, quality, safety and sustainability factors. Therefore, the advanced systems known as climbing formwork was introduced later. The climbing formwork is relatively new technology developed from the slipform in late 1960s. Unlike the developed countries, the practice of climbing formwork is adopted only in the specialized construction projects in India. The reason being, lack of awareness about the climbing formwork among many construction personnel and misconception about the erection and operation processes. Thus to reinforce the importance of climbing formwork in the Indian construction, a firm research is carried out on the selection and operation of different climbing formwork using constructability survey. A valid comparison of different climbing formwork with the conventional formwork is done for the lift core-wall in the 20 storey high-rise building model using Building Information Modeling (BIM). From the developed 3D BIM model, the cost, time, quality, safety and sustainability factors of both conventional and climbing formwork are explored in detail by quantitative and qualitative indices. The constructability factors associated with the conventional and different climbing formwork systems are generated. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.