Integrated Building Information Modelling

The construction sector is one of the oldest sectors of the economy that has played a defining role in the survival of the human race. While it is slow to adopt innovation, the last decade has been marked by an attempt to harness the true potential of increased computing power and information technology products, to make the ground-breaking shift from its traditional Computer Aided Design/Drafting (CADD) approach to an information rich model-based approach. More and more constituents of the industry are shifting towards Building Information Modelling (BIM) that provides such a model-centric way of working. BIM has the potential to positively shift the focus of the industry towards the much needed value-adding tasks, but its holistic implementation is still a challenging task. The BIM process requires that all the industry participants come on board and join hands for effective information management throughout the asset lifecycle and this shift requires an overhaul of the existing (fragmented) practices followed by the individual organizations in their particular sub-domain. The industry as a whole has come to realize that adoption of BIM is crucial for the built environment sector globally as it endeavors to overcome the challenges of environmental sustainability, cost overrun, time delays, and poor quality that are faced by the industry today. This realization is forcing the construction industry to undergo a transformational change in the way work is performed, processed and managed. Although BIM has been identified as an effective solution, its implementation in several parts of the world remains low. The industry requires a wellcrafted and well-documented path to increase the productivity, performance, and efficiency via the use of BIM. This chapter aims to do this by reporting the global best practices, standards, BIM implementation frameworks, manuals and policies from different countries. Through this, the authors attempt to unfold the status of BIM research, education and industry implementation in major developed and developing markets around the world. At the same time, the chapter also lays out the BIM adoption journey for these countries to allow the readers to understand how BIM implementation takes place over time at the sector level. While the benefits of BIM, are evident in the past research, these benefits alone may not be sufficient to convince stakeholders and encourage adoption. An extensive study of the successful BIM cases from across the world, the problems faced and lessons learned are reported in this chapter to allow the readers to develop a deeper understanding of the implementation process and encourage adoption

The importance of housing construction and its environmental impact have been argued in the past decades; the increase in housing refurbishment will have significant implications in the UK economy as the residential sector contributes almost a third of total UK construction output and more than 87% of 27.6 million housing stock will still be standing by 2050. Whole house refurbishment seems to be challenging due to the highly fragmented nature of construction practice, which makes the integration of diverse information throughout the project life-cycle difficult. Although Building Information Modelling is becoming increasingly important in the housing sector in order to enhance the practicality of housing construction and management, the current uptake of BIM in housing is very low and there are three main barriers to adopting BIM: business, technical and human problems. This chapter reviews the current BIM application and its adoption in housing and investigates an applicable decision support tool to enhance the practicality of housing information modelling in a way that a traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) or life cycle cost (LCC) does not. The potential way to integrate both LCA and LCC is suggested in order to measure the environmental and economic impacts of UK affordable housing to seek zero carbon homes. The case study demonstrates that what information is required and how data can be developed from stakeholders’ requirement in housing construction and management.

Building Information Modelling (BIM) when used in conjunction with a collaborative procurement method promises to overcome many of the redundancies and inefficiencies commonly associated with the construction industry. Despite the promise of increased stakeholder integration and seamless transition of project information, the reality of BIM deployment has thus far been disappointing. Whilst the issues of technological and system compatibility, costs and skill levels are partially responsible, it is frequently noted that existing contractual structures and emerging legal issues also act as barriers to implementation. It remains highly likely that the various standard forms of contract associated with the main construction procurement methods will continue to be used for the foreseeable future, therefore, it is desirable to identify and understand the ways in which conventional contract conditions have the potential to prove inappropriate or counterproductive in a BIM-enabled project environment. This chapter provides a review of the legal barriers and develops a conceptual model for analysing a contract’s ability to integrate BIM into the procurement process. The conceptual model is tested on a standard construction contract (GC21) to test its validity.

As the application of building information modeling (BIM) becomes more common, BIM model management becomes necessary and important to enhance the effectiveness of BIM implementation during the construction phase. The completeness and accuracy of a final as-built model is necessary and important for a general contractor (GC) beyond project closeout. BIM model inspection (BMI) is one of the major works executed by GCs for the completeness and accuracy of a final as-built model. Furthermore, final as-built BIM model management is now recognized as the most critical BIM management strategy in construction management. However, there are many problems in a final as-built model that exist in practice because of a final asbuilt model mismatch, the lack of final as-built models, and incorrect information entry of final as-built models. In order to solve the problems, this chapter proposes a final asbuilt BIM model inspection and management approach when preparing the final asbuilt model beyond project closeout. The utilization of the proposed approach can effectively manage the status and results of the final as-built BIM model inspection and management work performed. The proposed approach was applied in a selected building case study in Taiwan to verify our proposed approach and to demonstrate the effectiveness of preparing and managing a final as-built BIM model practically. Additionally, this chapter identifies the benefits, limitations, and problems encountered through real cases. Finally, conclusion and suggestions are summarized for further applications. We expect the effective use of the proposed approach to significantly help GCs to handle the final as-built BIM model inspection and management work effectively for the owner beyond project closeout.

While site layout planning (SLP) has been widely investigated in the literature, little attention has been directed towards improving the precision of the input parameters required by the SLP optimisation models. The main input parameters required in a dynamic site layout model are the travel frequencies between different facilities, the spatial coordinates of permanent facilities, candidate locations for temporary facilities and facility dimensions. Obtaining reasonable estimates of these parameters is challenging when a dynamic site environment is considered. The estimation process entails a realistic evaluation of: 1). the quantities of material to be transported between facilities at each stage of the construction process; 2). the coordinate positioning of permanent facilities; and 3). the dimensions of the temporary facilities to be positioned. This necessitates the utilisation of information on the progress of different activities and their corresponding material demands and associated facilities during each construction stage. The increasing adoption of building information modelling (BIM) in projects and the resulting extensive project database made available by BIM has provided unique opportunities to improve the accuracy of such assessments. This chapter discusses the applications of BIM in SLP. The chapter starts by discussing the composition of a typical SLP problem and the importance of obtaining reasonable estimates for its associated parameters. The chapter continues by summarising the state-of-the-art in BIM-based methods developed to provide input data to different analyses as well as the state-of-the-art of SLP optimisation models and corresponding solution methods. Benefits to be reaped from integrating BIM within the SLP problem are discussed. Frameworks developed for obtaining travel frequencies and locations of temporary facilities on site, as well as methodologies to account for the dimensions of such facilities at each construction project stage, by taking advantage of the information made available by building information models, project schedules and construction cost databases are presented. The results obtained through applications of one of the proposed frameworks to an illustrative case study highlight the capabilities offered by adopting BIM in SLP.

Complexity in today’s construction projects necessitate comprehensive proficiency in various divergent domains. These domain-specific professionals usually work with software solutions that are highly specialized which often do not provide adequate means of data exchange with other software products. However, the building industry has collaborative atmosphere that involves repeated, iterative data exchanges and communication. To automate information processing there is a need of standardized and qualified data for efficient working processes. IFC provides vendorindependent and open building information models to capture and exchange data. This chapter presents an introduction to the IFC and emphasizes its utility in all the stages of a project by illustrating its application in design, construction and operation & maintenance stage.

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) sector is currently faced with enormous technological and institutional transformations across the design, construction and operation stages of a project. One very important instrument to such change is the rapid pace of BIM deployment with its resultant challenges. Indeed, the BIM work processes vary across discipline, thus creating a new dramatic requirement for the way in which product data is produced, integrated and shared across the supply chain. This particularly places an unusual responsibility on the building product manufacturing sector. There has been a plethora of research on BIM adoption within construction and design practices. Not much research has been done on utilising BIM for construction products management (CPM). Research from recent case study with a construction product manufacturer provides useful insight and practical experience on lessons learnt which may be valuable in other similar contexts. The research results provide an organizational level framework with insights into how BIM can be implemented within the construction products manufacturing (CPM) sector to improve solutions at different implementation stages of the AEC sector. The findings of the study push the boundary beyond the fragmented silo style of working between product manufacturing and the construction process, and reveal the new relationships that are formed and the synchronous communication that occurs from the point of object creation through the upload unto the web repository, and ultimately, sharing the product data via the project model among the multi-organisation project team.

The climate is changing, and the Earth’s resources are being exploited. According to the latest report by the United Nations scientific panel on climate change, collective and significant global action is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to keep global warming below 2°C (EC website, 2014). As the environmental degradation continues to occur in an accelerated way, time is of the essence for taking effective precautions. Due to its inputs, outputs, and the construction process, the construction industry can adversely affect the environment. Enhancing lean and sustainability performance of the construction industry can contribute to the reduction of the construction industry’s footprint. Integrated BIM usage can be an effective tool in enhancing sustainability and lean performance of construction project management and of asset management. Based on an in-depth literature review, this chapter focuses on the implementation of BIM in the construction project management phases and buildings' lifecycle covering the ‘asset management'. This chapter is expected to enhance the literature especially with its scope and holistic view.

Due to the rising recognition of environmental sustainability, environmental assessment has been a core task for construction projects. Traditional environmental assessment of construction projects follows the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) rule and principles, which may be time consuming and require extensive manual inputs. In recent years, many studies has been initiated to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) as the platform to host LCA implementations. Benefits, including increased productivity and flexibility, have been recorded. However, some problems, such as varied scope and definition, have also been identified. It is therefore necessary for the construction industry to understand the current status and future development of BIMintegrated LCA. A systematic review shows that BIM have been used as the platform to host LCA implementations for various project life cycles (including production, transportation, construction, operation and end-of-life stages) and environmental impacts (mainly including energy, carbon emissions, water and waste). In addition, future actions are needed in the aspect of standardization, benchmarking and available of databases in order to allow accurate comparison of the environmental performance between different projects and design alternatives.

The construction industry globally is known to be very conservative in terms of the methods used in project procurement and delivery. Scholars and construction professionals consider the use of innovative software such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) will result in a change in the roles and responsibilities of quantity surveyors and in improved project performance. However, there is a dearth of literature that demonstrates the impact of BIM on quantity surveyor roles and responsibilities, and project performance. This chapter examines the use of BIM in the construction industry and whether it impacts on the key roles and responsibilities of the quantity surveying professional and on construction project cost performance in South Africa. The study on which this chapter is based proposes that BIM has no impact on the conventional roles and responsibilities of quantity surveyors and project cost performance and adopts a sequential mixed-methods research approach which involves collecting and analysing quantitative and qualitative data in two successive phases within one study. The population of the study comprises of quantity surveyors in the South African construction industry. The results indicate that BIM has a negative impact on project cost performance and that the traditional roles and responsibilities of quantity surveying professionals in South Africa have not changed owing to the implementation of BIM technology, although BIM has improved the efficiency with which quantity surveyors perform their tasks. Based on these findings, the study concludes that the implementation of BIM technology on construction projects in South Africa will not change the responsibilities and roles of quantity surveyors on projects. It is therefore recommended that South African quantity surveyors use BIM technology on projects to realise the full benefits derived from its implementation internationally. However, further research is required to investigate other aspects of the implementation of BIM in the construction industry by using a larger sample and project size.

Considering the huge potential of Building Information Modeling (BIM) for use in construction projects, modern Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation (AECO) industries are increasingly recruiting graduate engineers with BIM knowledge and skills. Globally, university AECO departments are investing time and resources in designing BIM courses for faculty and students at different levels. This article provides an overview of the current BIM courses taught in-class and online by Department of Civil Engineering at National Taiwan University (hereinafter referred to as ‘NTUCE’). Detailed discussions are given on a basic in-class BIM course taught at NTUCE, titled “Technology and Application of BIM”, and its curriculum with focus on course objectives, course description, teaching resources used for the course, course contents, teaching methodologies, course discussions, and the evaluation process involved. Also, we provide an overview of the three online BIM courses developed by NTUCE on the Coursera platform of xMOOCs model, i.e., Engineering information management: BIM Concepts, BIM Modeling and BIM Applications and CAD/BIM practical capstone project.

In recent years, several research efforts have focused on the application of information technology (IT) as a means by which to improve the integration process of construction safety management. Visual representation can provide an effective tool for monitoring and management in the field of safety management. In Taiwan, monitoring of hazardous gas detection on the underground construction sites is a very important issue. In order to enhance the performance of controlling in hazardous gas detection in underground construction sites, this chapter proposes a solution for the integration of building information modeling (BIM) and wireless sensor networks (WSN) technologies to enable the monitoring of hazardous gas conditions in underground construction site and provides warning signals. WSN consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communication capabilities. First, the proposed methodology is implemented by using BIM technology due to its capability to accurately provide visual safety-related status indications with different colors. Furthermore, in order to support the wide range of safety analysis used wireless communication capabilities, proposed BIM-based safety monitor system is developed. Thus, this chapter examines the use of the BIM-based safety monitor system to provide the flow of safety information collected by WSN sensors, and visually illustrates the status of detection and alarm regarding to hazardous gas with different colors. A case study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed approach. Finally, benefits, limitations, conclusions, and suggestions are summarized for further applications.

The construction industry is undergoing a radical change as project owners are demanding for more project visibility at lower cost and better risk management; this has increased the use of new technologies in project implementations. The concept of information islands has remained a major challenge in construction projects where the existing management systems have restrained the sharing of information on the building life cycle and also cooperation among contracting parties. The global call for the use of building information modeling (BIM) is to improve the quality characteristics of the construction industry’s outputs and create potential impact on the industry. The upgrading from the use of 2D CAD systems to 3D BIM technologies has dramatically increased project efficiency and affordability among the large architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms. The chapter investigates on the prospects and possible challenges confronting the upgrade to BIM technologies in the two leading African economies namely; Nigeria and South Africa. The research approach is based on comprehensive literature scan and case studies. The findings reveal the key challenges to adopting BIM in both countries, the paper also recommends the way forward.