MDA-based facility management applications under BIM

PurposeThis paper aims to describe how building information model (BIM) and big data can be combined in the same interface for providing new value to stakeholders, such as the property owner and user, as well as property service and workplace service companies. The research presents a new concept, which shows how the BIM can be exploited efficiently during maintenance.Design/methodology/approachInitially, existing facility management (FM) processes were investigated to find out how to digitize them and identify bottlenecks. Second, BIM’s data content was explored to identify the information that could be used to streamline FM processes. Third, the potential of the active data measured in the building was evaluated. Finally, research was undertaken to find out how constantly fluctuating information can be combined with BIM objects and what kind of added value that combination could offer. The literature review was used to support the primary contribution. In addition, the research problems were described and the basics of the research were obtained by interviews. The author has interviewed 27 professionals from several stakeholders.FindingsThe first finding is that the BIM can serve as a platform for building use, various services and management when it has been adequately generated during the planning and construction phases and enriched before being commissioned. The other essential finding is the theory of conditions data model (CDM), which is a technical environment that combines active data with BIM. The most important advantages of BIM in FM are as follows: • Building owner attains better user satisfaction, acquires better quality and smarter services, saves energy, ensures better indoor conditions and improves building profitability. • Service providers can develop and offer new services, speed up operations, save resources and generate more profits. • The occupant gets a better user experience, faster and higher quality services and better indoor conditions.Research limitations/implicationsThe CDM enables to generate for the real estate and construction (RE&C) sector a novel BIM-based ecosystem with standard rules, instead of every individual operator developing his/her own unique solution for BIM use in FM. This will have an impact on the entire RE&C sector’s operating methods and will have significant financial implications in the near future. Application of this research is limited to office buildings where indoor condition measuring is undertaken continuously and where the knowledge of the use cases of spaces is available. In addition, the proper BIM in the Industry Foundation Classes format must exist. The evaluation of the validity of big data is not discussed in this article. Visualization of data and content of user interfaces will be the topic of another article by the author. This article does not deal with intricate technical details, but crucial issues are defined.Originality/valueThe article presents a unique method for BIM use in FM. The theory of CDM (how to combine active data with BIM) is completely new and a similar solution has not been presented earlier. The theory of the presented method will be the crucial key for BIM use and will lead worldwide commissioning. Currently, the theory is under test in the practical pilot project. The results of the project will be published in the next article.

The usage of Building Information Modelling (BIM) in the Facility Management (FM) sector will significantly speed up the design and construction phases. However, most facility managers continue to use the traditional paper-based approach to manage facility maintenance and operations, which includes designs and spreadsheets. The goal of this research is to pinpoint the factors that affect BIM's acceptability in the FM sector. Six factors, including organisational culture, individual competency, perceived usability, perceived ease of use, individual intention, and organisational aim in the context of facilities management services, were found. Prior to that, it is necessary to determine whether the theory supporting the adoption of BIM in facility management is valid and reliable. This study used an abductive methodology that blends qualitative and quantitative techniques. 30 respondents completed a set of questionnaires as part of the study's pilot test. Based on the findings of the pilot study, it can be demonstrated that the high degree of Cronbach's Alpha values is accepted, demonstrating the validity and reliability of the theory supporting the adoption of BIM in facility management and its high degree of internal consistency. This study demonstrates that there are important factors that affect how well BIM is received in the facilities management sector. All the six factors have a significant impact indicating that the theory underlying the adoption of BIM in facility management is valid and reliable and has a high degree of internal consistency.

The management of complex information flow can be a crucial aspect of Facility Management (FM). Because of the increasing complexity of the present-day building projects, FM activities, for example, maintaining a building facility or a system, normally involve enormous human multitasking across different knowledge domains. Lessons learned from the present successful FM instances manifest that the FM teams are increasingly interested in applying more viable technologies to achieve the effective management of massive information. Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology is one of the promising approaches, as it forms a platform for the users to manage the information of a facility and leverages virtual digital representations as a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle. Nevertheless, the fully immersive environments produced by BIM still lack the capability of mapping a virtual world into a real world, or vice versa. Augmented Reality (AR) is emerging as an advanced visualization which is possible to bridge the gap. It enables the demonstration of BIM context into the real world, and is envisaged to effectively improve the way of how information is displayed. Meanwhile, the virtuality-to-reality changeover from BIM to AR is conductive to a better understanding of information about a facility from the human perception perspective. The objective of the study is to explore that the merging of AR with BIM is a way for improving the information search and management in FM applications. This chapter firstly brief what is FM and how it is generally implemented. Followed by the state-of-the-art review of BIM/AR aided FM research, the chapter then proposes the viability of integrating BIM and AR and demonstrates its efficacy of processing complex onsite information based on four BIM+AR case studies. Finally, the chapter discusses the technological transferability issues in terms of deploying more and more BIM+AR scenarios in the prospective FM process.

Purpose: To explore the evolution of Facility Management (FM) in the Building Information Modelling (BIM) process. The research aimed to establish Critical Success Factors (CSF) which help deliver successful BIM projects, and to present these in a ‘FM-BIM Mobilisation Framework’. Background: Inefficiencies, poor collaboration and a focus on short-term costs in the construction industry, combined with a lack of innovation and digital competency when ordering projects, have resulted in a failure to deliver assets which have sustainable outcomes over their whole-life. Methodology: A mixed methods concurrent convergent design, incorporating side-by-side narrative text analysis was adopted to merge qualitative/quantitative findings. Critical Success Themes (CST) from literature were then used to establish CSF through; 19 interviews with FM/BIM experts, and a questionnaire to gauge FM industry awareness of BIM (using UK and international inputs). The final merged CSF were incorporated into a framework. This was validated using a two-stage process with a focus group using some of the same FM/BIM experts. Key findings: 10 CSF Main-Themes (MT), with a 100 Sub-Themes (ST) were identified covering important digital skills, knowledge and competences people require to contribute to the BIM process. Clients and Facility Mangers (FMs) must engage early if the full benefits of BIM are to be realised in the operational phase. They must clearly define their information requirements to align with business processes, and collaborate with the delivery team to ensure information is captured/transferred into the relevant management systems. Originality/value: The comprehensive end-to-end framework combines FM and BIM CSF into one online interactive tool which provides a wealth of useful knowledge, sources, benefits and practical examples. Although based on the UK BIM Framework, the alignment with ‘ISO 19650’ ensures it will also benefit an international audience. Keywords: Facility Management (FM), Building Information Modelling (BIM), ‘FM-BIM Mobilisation Framework’, digitalisation, information requirements.

The construction sector in emerging nations like Pakistan faces challenges due to the limited use of advanced technology. Building Information Modeling (BIM) offers key benefits, including cost savings, reduced rework, and early detection of design faults. BIM also manages large amounts of data by integrating information from various phases of the project life-cycle. This study examines BIM’s impact on planning, design, and construction phases through a survey of 40 field experts, ranked using the Likert scale. Results show that BIM enhances collaboration, supports better design pathways, and assists project managers during planning. In design, it improves information sharing, efficiency, and scheduling. Dur-ing construction, BIM facilitates seamless information flow, visualized model execution, and effective risk management. The findings highlight BIM’s potential to address lifecycle chal-lenges and improve overall project outcomes.

Building Information Model (BIM) was initially proposed by Autodesk in 2002. Currently, BIM has been widely recognized in the industry worldwide, baced on its great value. The concept of BIM has been gradually well-known in construction industry in China, and it’s a good prospect for development and application of BIM. But its application and promotion is still in start-up phase in China. It should be actively promoted in whole society. It was suggested in the paper: application and promotion of BIM technology should be implemented step by step, and precursed to apply in construction phase, ultimately achieved overall industrial application. This paper analyzed characteristics and advantages of application and promotion of BIM technology in construction phase, and discussed implementation sschemes and steps. Finally, it proposed BIM should be grandly guided to achieve comprehensive application in project’s whole-life.

The importance of technical disclosure in construction of project is described and the necessity of application of BIM (Building Information Modeling) technology used in technical disclosure is analyzed correspondingly. Many actual cases of technical disclosure in construction used BIM technology in our company with its application are discussed subsequently. The results show that the BIM technology can simplify the procedures of technical disclosure on the construction phase, and multi-software work together based on BIM provides a guidance for different types of projects. Many advantages of BIM such as construction simulation, 3D roaming can improve the quality of technical disclosure. Finally, recommendations and requirements for the specific implementation of BIM on the construction phase are proposed: the BIM model for technical disclosure is the most unique model in the entire life cycle; the locally refined extent is much more than the final completion model, which should be paid more attention to in the whole process of program development when BIM implemented.

While the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) conducted two pilot Building Information Modeling (BIM) designs in 2005, published their BIM Roadmap in 2006, and hopes to be “fully BIM capable” by 2012, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) has only recently (Fall 2008) embarked on their BIM journey. Indeed, the USAF was much later than the USACE in promulgating their support of BIM, but their delay has the benefit of increased industry BIM knowledge and awareness. Consequently, the USAF initiative has the possibility of greater immediate Return on Investment (ROI) than the Army’s BIM initiative. This research assessed BIM’s impact on the design and construction phase of the two Army Corps of Engineers pilot construction projects and compared that to the USAF BIM approach based on Dynamic Prototyping. By establishing baseline data according to the Unified Facility Criteria (UFC) standard use category codes used across the Department of Defense, these BIM-based projects were evaluated for statistically significant performance differences compared to recent projects of similar use according to three metrics. These three metrics were cost growth, schedule growth, and construction timeline growth. After evaluating the data it was determined that all the BIM-based projects analyzed experienced statistically significant differences in their productivity metrics compared to recently constructed projects of the same type that have similar use. However, there was no significant trend in either positive or negative performance in the construction phase.

Although a considerable amount of research has addressed the use of building information modelling (BIM) in facilities management (FM) within the past years, there is limited systematic review on investigating the potentials of BIM within the operation and maintenance (O&M) life cycle phase. Yet, this phase could account for approximately 60% of the total life cycle costs of assets. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review on the application of BIM in the O&M phase to identify current research trends, research gaps and future directions. This study achieves the aforementioned purpose by adopting the preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P). It employs qualitative and quantitative techniques to analyse the articles from a combination of three multi-disciplinary research databases, namely—Scopus, Web of Science and Engineering Village, which also comprises Compendex, InSpec, GeoRef and GeoBase sub-databases. After an in-depth review of 196 selected journal articles, this study systemically presents: (1) bibliometric analyses of the literature in BIM and O&M; (2) research patterns and trends; (3) drivers and barriers to BIM–O&M integration; and (4) research gaps mapped into a standard project management lifecycle to guide future research directions. The content analysis reveals that BIM has mainly been integrated under seven functions: information management (IM), advanced technology (AT), maintenance and asset management (MAM), indoor management (IM), performance assessment (PA), visualisation (V), and lean management (LM). Findings of the study reveal that the UK, USA and China are the top ranked countries with regards to research outputs on BIM–O&M integrations. The majority of BIM integrations within O&M falls under the information management function, whereas the least research output was recorded under lean management. In addition, the majority of studies focused on institutional and infrastructure facility types, but residential, industrial and commercial buildings were underrepresented, despite their disproportionate physical dominance within most societies. Findings also show that potential drivers and barriers for BIM integrations within O&M can be classified into three main categories—technical, organisational, and legal/contractual. It is then concluded that the application of BIM within O&M is still emerging, which further emphasises the need for more studies that address value realization in the context of BIM in O&M, with particular focus on the specific O&M principles for different building types.

The construction industry has made significant improvements in adopting and integrating emerging technologies. One example is the wide use of Building Information Modeling (BIM), which offers numerous benefits to the construction industry. BIM assists project teams in achieving better quality with lower risk, shorter timeframes, and reduced costs. Meanwhile, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines the required discipline to meet stakeholders' needs. PMBOK aims to facilitate the achievement of predefined project deliverables and improve project goals through effective communication and decision-making processes. This paper presents a questionnaire-based investigation to measure whether BIM implementation enhances the PMBOK in projects and whether BIM positively affects Project Management Knowledge Areas (PMKAs) on a global scale. The questionnaire consisted of 7 general questions, 37 PMBOK-oriented questions, and 4 questions targeting BIM advantages and obstacles. 95 experts participated in the survey based on the LinkedIn search and survey invitation. The results showed that BIM dramatically influences the quality of execution of PMKAs, specifically in Project Integration Management. Additionally, the study examined the effect of BIM on the product lifecycle that BIM improves project coordination and discovers clashes during the engineering phase. In the construction phase, BIM facilitates as-built drawings and enhances communication, and during the post-construction phase, BIM enhances facility and components’ lifecycle management. The research also found that the most significant obstacles to implementing BIM are the lack of experts, value propositions, and efficient training.

The aging population is growing drastically all over the world. With the advent of the global era, universal design is garnering considerable interest, as the number of multicultural families is increasing, and various user classes are being created. In addition, with the advances in construction technology, architectural design is becoming more diverse, and convenience facilities are also getting distributed in various ways. As a result, more buildings need to apply universal design, indicating that various architectural information and universal design for the user class are required. Various data are needed for universal design evaluation, but there is a limit to evaluating with two-dimensional (2D) drawings. However, the limitations of 2D drawings can be overcome via building information modeling (BIM) combined with architectural data, which remarkably simplifies the universal design evaluation. This study was conducted with the aim to analyze architectural information by extracting architectural elements necessary for universal design evaluation from BIM data. It was confirmed that the calculations for universal design evaluation can be performed by 3D shape or attribute analysis using BIM data and computer programming. In order to create an automated evaluation algorithm for universal design, the evaluation methods were classified according to the universal design evaluation guide, based on building users and user diversity. In addition, even if the evaluation methods were the same by location, different points were classified by location, and evaluation items and information necessary for the evaluation were organized by category for each facility. Through this classification, we created an algorithm with seven types of methods for extracting the BIM data and comparing them by evaluation method for an automated analysis. In addition, an analysis was performed directly on the BIM design sample model using an automated evaluation algorithm. Although there were various architectural objects in the design data, evaluation was possible using algorithms. By applying the universal design evaluation and BIM data evaluation methods, we could confirm that the BIM-based universal design automation evaluation method prevents human error and is thus superior to the existing evaluation methods. Further, the automation evaluation method can contribute to BIM activation as the BIM data can be used in various studies such as design certification evaluation and automation analysis.

Development of quality improvement procedures and tools for facility management BIM

Purpose The aim of this study is to suggest configuration methodologies of active building information model (BIM) functions that enable to practically control limitations by optimizing schedule overlapping linked to its space models after analyzing workspace conflict analysis for a bridge model. This study also suggests development methodologies of active BIM-functions, linking an optimized method and improved strategies of future BIM-operation model through an analysis of limitations of a passive BIM-operation system for architectural projects. Method The existing BIM-system manually performed a simplified comparison review of 3D-shapes and its virtual reality (VR) analysis with visual manipulation of 3D-models in a virtual environment. Such BIM functions require a separate analysis process to organize BIM-output data as reprocessed business data. This has many limitations when directly utilizing the visual information produced by commercial BIM-systems as practical operation data. Accordingly, this study develops functions of an active BIM-system so that the managers can directly analyze practical requirements by integrating an optimized analysis algorithm with the BIM-system to improve the passive BIM operation environments. As a method of configuring the active BIM-functions, an optimized algorithm for establishing resolution strategies for workspace conflicts is constructed. As functions for supporting active BIM-operations, this study utilizes fuzzy and genetic algorithm (GA) approaches. These approaches will be used to develop visualized risk assessment model and workspace conflict optimization model based on active BIM. Results & Discussion By enhancing fragmentary analysis functions of simplified 3D-models with the development of an active BIM-system, the BIM-system can utilize output information derived from a process of analysis, evaluation and control of the BIM-models as a practical operation information model for both design and construction phase. Therefore, it is expected that an active BIM can simplify data analysis and the system operation process for managers with virtual object models and expand the active BIM-system to the life cycle of civil engineering projects.

PurposeAdoption of building information modelling (BIM) in facilities management (FM) provides an information platform to store and exchange asset data. Quantity Surveyors, with cost management expertise, are increasingly involved in FM roles in the operation phase. However, no study has been conducted on how BIM may assist Quantity Surveyors when contracted in FM roles. This study aims to identify the potential benefits and challenges of using BIM by Quantity Surveyors in FM roles.Design/methodology/approachInterviews were conducted with eight professionals from an international built and natural asset design and management company and its FM business partner in Australia.FindingsLack of complete and accurate data was the main issue faced by Quantity Surveyors in FM. The benefits of BIM in FM were digitizing and storing asset information and developing a cost database that would be useful for Quantity Surveyors, whereas challenges included keeping model data up to date, cost, industry resistance to change and contractors' lack of model use.Originality/valueThis study contributes to revealing the niche adoption of BIM by Quantity Surveyors in FM and identifying the issues faced by Quantity Surveyors in FM roles using BIM. It contributes to the knowledge of BIM adoption in post-construction. Findings will be useful to develop strategies for adopting BIM in FM and supporting Quantity Surveyors' roles in FM.

Since 2015, a 13-week core course “Integrated Building Project Development (IBPD)” was launched annually for final year students of all undergraduate programmes of the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering of the City University of Hong Kong. These undergraduate programmes cover most disciplines of the construction industry—architectural studies, civil and structural engineering, building services engineering, surveying, and construction engineering and management. From 2018 onwards, students are required to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) across all disciplines in the project development process of this course. A BIM project execution plan on Client’s BIM requirements, the scope of BIM implementation and the required BIM deliverables in this course is provided to students. A BIM server that supports in-campus and remote access was built for students to store, retrieve and archive their digital files so that they can practise BIM communication and data exchange on a centralised platform. This paper shares the successful execution of the BIM project execution plan, under the framework of the interdisciplinary BIM (iBIM) implementation and the BIM server architecture, by the students.KeywordsUndergraduate programmesIntegratedMultidisciplinaryBuilding Information Modelling (BIM)