Leveraging BIM for digital built environment asset management

Abstract

A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study shows that all stakeholders in the capital facilities industry waste a huge amount of money looking for, validating, and/or recreating facility information that should be readily available. The total cost of these activities within the capital facilities industries in the United States was conservatively estimated at $15.8 billion in 2002, with two-thirds of that cost occurring during the facilities' operations and maintenance phase. This is confirmed by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) Maintenance Survey in 2009, which states that the loss of information generates an added cost of 12.4% of total annual mean O&M costs. Nowadays, standards and specifications have been developed about availability, integrity, and transfer of data and information during the operational phase of an asset life. PAS 1192-3, among these, suggests the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) models to store and access facility information, but the turning point is the ability to provide different stakeholders with different data, which should be targeted to them, easily accessible, readable, and updatable (and up to date). This research started with the collection of asset managers' needs and then the definition of new procedures for assets and facility management in a BIM-based workflow focusing on how to allow users to access, use, and update facility data stored in a BIM model without a BIM authoring tool. Examples are shown for: (1) management of rooms occupancy; (2) management of mechanical equipment status; (3) qualitative condition assessment of buildings; and (4) appraisal of the service life of building components and systems according to ISO 15686-8. These four tools allow to compute and control some key indicators of the asset, with also the possibility to compare them inside a portfolio. This paper presents the four tools, paying also attention to the workflows to be followed and to the different data needs of the stakeholders involved.

A Methodology for a Performance Information Model to Support Facility Management

“…Recent publications have defined BIM-based workflows to compute and compare KPIs in order to make a qualitative assessment of the building and its parts [75] and to automate the monitoring of buildings during their regular operation [76]. In both cases the digital model becomes the mirror of the building and stores its actual performances to support facility managers in making decisions.…”

A BIM-based PSS Approach for the Management of Maintenance Operations of Building Equipment

“…Similarly, a BIM-based automatic maintenance work order scheduling algorithm was proposed by Chen et al [21] with the goal of optimizing maintenance operations' scheduling. Other works addressed the management of mechanical equipment status considering the BIM authoring perspective [58]. However, as far as the management of the buildings' equipment is concerned, most studies focused on refurbishment methods based on BIM [59], while research on their life cycle maintenance activities is poorly addressed [42].…”

Development of a Web Application for Historical Building Management through BIM Technology

“…Besides this, BIM provides ways to manage the building lifecycle through the integration of information in the model. However, the tools to create and manage that same information for existent building projects are being developed in BIM [26].…”