Using Building Information Modelling to Manage Client Requirements in Social Housing Projects

Abstract

This paper proposes a set of guidelines for using Building Information Modelling (BIM) to manage client requirements in the context of social housing projects. A process model representing main activities involved in requirements management has been devised, as well as nine constructs that can be used for assessing the effectiveness of using BIM for client requirements management. The process of managing and modelling clients’ requirements is important to improve value generation, considering the limited resources usually available for social housing projects, as well as the need to deal with the diversity of user profiles. The use of BIM-based tools to support this process can potentially improve the performance of those projects in terms of environmental and social sustainability. Design Science Research was the methodological approach adopted in this investigation. The main outcome of this study, the set of guidelines, emerged from an empirical study carried out in a social housing project from Brazil. This study explores the managerial perspective of client requirements modelling, proposing practical contributions, such as understanding the challenges of managing requirements in social housing projects, and theoretical contributions, such as descriptions of the activities involved in client requirements management and their interactions, and constructs for assessing BIM-based solutions for that problem.

Method for managing requirements in healthcare projects using building information modelling

“…In the empirical study, 56% of requirements were assessed in a semi-automated way while 44% could be translated into logical rules by using Solibri or dRofus, enabling fully automated assessment. The more automated the design assessment is, the longer the time designers will have to improve design solutions (Baldauf et al, 2020).…”

“…Explicit requirements and specifications must then be stored (Kiviniemi, 2005;Shen et al, 2013;Jallow et al, 2014), refined, communicated, prioritized by decision makers and, finally, be used to assess design compliance (Shen et al, 2013;Jallow et al, 2014). Baldauf et al (2020) proposed a process model with interrelated activities involved in client requirements management with the support of BIM for the context of social housing projects. Those authors also identified benefits of using BIM in client requirements management, which are summarised in Table 2.…”

“…A broad repository of requirements is useful for creating requirement templates that allow a large set of requirements to be reused in different projects (Kiviniemi, 2005;Jallow et al, 2014) Changes control BIM should assist in monitoring and controlling changes and understanding how other requirements may be affected by a change (Shen et al, 2013;Jallow et al, 2014). It can also be used to communicate in real-time changes in requirements that need to be updated or refined frequently (Jallow et al, 2014;Baldauf et al, 2020) User interface BIM should facilitate the user interface and its widely accepted by project teams (Eastman et al, 2009) Standardization BIM can potentially support the standardization of a large number of criteria for assessing design proposals (Baldauf et al, 2020)…”

“…BIM should support the modelling of different types of requirements and levels of abstraction (Baldauf et al, 2020) Table 2. Benefits of using BIM for client requirements management (Baldauf et al, 2020)…”

Towards a Framework for Promoting Communication during Project Definition

“…According to researchers such as Whelton, Ballard [7], Winch, Usmani [8], one of the main reasons for this problem is the poor communication between designers and clients. This issue is even more challenging since achieving effective communication is highly more complex and challenging in hospital projects [9,10] because in such projects, there are multiple clients such as users (clinicians, patients, etc. ), managers, and/or the government (paying client).…”