BIM business value for asset owners through effective asset information management

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the processes, tools and techniques of strategic asset information management (AIM) for built assets, and how the asset information content enhances the proficiency of asset managers to effectively manage their assets throughout their life cycle by utilising building information modelling (BIM) and asset management (AM) systems. For most asset managers, the problem is not the lack of information about their assets, but the abundance of it, and most especially the absence of established processes and protocols to effectively manage large sets of asset data. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a strategy to control and manage this information in order for asset managers to harness its potential and realise value from their organisation’s information assets.. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study strategy was used to investigate the effective management of asset data in an AIM system. Seven sets of interviews were conducted and nine respondents were interviewed. These were analysed through qualitative thematic analysis using the NVivo software. Findings The paper identifies six dimensions of value that BIM contributes to AM, which are: management, commerce, efficiency, industry, user and technology value. Also, the paper demonstrates that there is real value to be derived by the asset owner from the effective management of asset information. The study highlights that the value of BIM is not inherent but would require many other processes to deliver value to the organisation. Originality/value The key value of the paper is that it identifies important techniques for managing asset data and how asset information is collected, organised, stored, controlled, analysed, secured, shared and reported within a virtual AIM system for strategic management-based decisions.

Identifying and Prioritizing the Selection Criteria of Appropriate Repair and Maintenance Methods for Commercial Buildings

“…However, the above methods can be used if accompanied with strong information management processes (Häkkinen & Belloni, 2011;Munir et al, 2019;Shohet & Nobili, 2016a, 2016b. As a consequence, building information modeling in structural management reduces the operational costs and risks and also improves the quality, energy efficiency, useful life, and safety of the build-ings (Kim et al, 2014;Sadeghi et al, 2019).…”

BIM business value for asset owners: key issues and challenges

“…In comparison, Becerik-Gerber et al (2012) suggested key opportunities and application areas of BIM in asset operations, which are: locating components, facilitating real-time data access, checking maintainability and automatically creating digital assets. Furthermore, Munir et al (2019) highlighted the typologies of BIM business value that could be realised by an asset owner, which are: management, commerce, efficiency, industry, user and technology value. All the aforementioned studies have tried to evaluate the business value of BIM; however, there is a need for more studies that investigate the challenges and determine why few asset owners have been able to evaluate BIM business value in asset operations.…”

“…Similarly, AM refers to an organised set of activities that involve the identification, acquisition, management and disposal of assets including supplementary activities, such as planning, collecting, scheduling and controlling organisational resources to make the assets efficient and effective. Furthermore, for effective AM, BIM-based data can be useful to execute business processes at the strategic, tactical and operational levels (Munir et al , 2019).…”

Requirement management in a life cycle perspective based on ISO 19650-1 and CoClass as the new classification system in Sweden

“…The most fundamental principle for asset owners and asset managers is to capture the highest possible value from assets, and it would not be achieved without making right decisions in the right time to exchange right deliverables with other stakeholders during the asset life cycle. As Munir et al (2019a, b) assert, from the point of view of many asset managers, the information shortage about the assets is not the major problem, but it is the abundance of the information that is most challenging, and particularly, the most predominant issue is the lack of established processes and protocols to manage the asset data on a large scale and in an efficient way. In this regard, the challenge is to define “who needs what” considering the information required by the stakeholders (Hosseini et al , 2018).…”

“…Classification systems in the AECO industry have emerged to equip building data with standard terminology and semantics in an object-oriented manner to unify the data exchange methods throughout the asset life cycle (Ekholm and Häggström, 2011; Mayo and Issa, 2014). Classification systems are also seen by Munir et al (2019a, b) as means to support standardization, version control and in order to ensure all involved parties call apple as “apple” throughout the whole process. The advent of classification systems and the realization of their importance have led researchers to assess the current classification systems with different point of views.…”