Application of Building Information Modeling in Facility Management: A Case Study of a Commercial Project

Abstract

Adoption of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Facility Management (FM) is effective for integrating Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) for providing better services to the end-users of a project for a whole lifecycle. Real estate sector in India has witnessed high growth in recent times with the rise in demand for commercial as well as residential spaces. Most of them are facing issues related to AEC and are not been able to manage such on-site problems resulting in delaying of projects. It is better to develop proper coordination to provide integrated information about AEC in advance to reduce conflicts occurring during the construction and operational phase. The operational phase of a building is the main contributor to the building lifecycle cost and estimates show that the lifecycle cost is five to seven times higher than the initial investment costs and three times the construction cost. There is a lack of real-life case studies on BIM in FM especially for existing assets even though new constructions representing only 1-2 percent of the total building stock in a typical year. So a case study of a commercial project is taken for Facility Management using BIM as a tool and analyzed for probable solutions for mitigating AEC conflicts. The findings from the study demonstrate that BIM value in FM stems from improvement to current manual processes of information handover; improvement to the accuracy of FM data, to the accessibility of FM data and in work order execution ultimately improving the sustainability of building construction projects.