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A robust method in environmental load assessment of buildings is urgently required to reduce the environmental burden of the construction industry. While the industry utilizes the life cycle assessment (LCA) method to assess environmental impacts of detailed designs, the implementation of changes at that late stage of development is often expensive and undesirable. On the other hand, during the early design stages, the LCA method is severely limited by the lack of information available, e.g., uncertainty about final materials to be used. This research study investigates how building information modeling (BIM) can facilitate LCA analysis at an early design stage.

A literature review is conducted to establish a framework for BIM and LCA integration, which creates the foundation for the development of a new BIM-based LCA tool. The tool is empirically evaluated on a large case study of a residential building in Denmark.

Case study results show that the new tool facilitates decision-making in an integrated design process, providing reliable LCA results on an early stage model, while avoiding intermediate manual input by the end user in contrast to other commercial LCA tools.

A first prototype of a BIM-based tool is demonstrated, which allows professionals, small architectural companies, students and researchers to calculate the environmental loads of the building in the early design stage in an automated, transparent and time-saving manner.

Industry uptake of digital modeling is improving. Recent evidence suggests building information modeling (BIM) is the commercial reality of today’s construction education, and the way of the future that has truly begun. Amongst the significance of this is BIM’s potential to revolutionize the industry. The purpose of this paper is to use the learning experiences of undergraduate students in two construction management subjects involving quantity measurement and cost estimation to explore students’ motivation toward BIM education. In particular, the study investigates decision factors underlying students’ selection of software for information management in a modeling environment.

A total of 674 undergraduate students from the same institution were surveyed, out of which 153 responses were retrieved. The data provide insights into decisions taken by students while metamorphosing traditional processes into BIM-driven outcomes, in the form of commercial estimates of a real life project reported through a bill of quantities. Some 29 decision factors were analyzed. These include prior training, flair for creativity, ease of use, economic reasons, learning outcomes, on-going technical support and support infrastructure. Reductionist methods involving factor analysis and Cronbach’s α reliability estimate procedures were used to investigate the most important decision factors from amongst the decision factors analyzed.

Results show all the 29 decision factors are statistically significant. Access to on-going support, the mandatory requirement to use a particular tool to complete an assessment task and the requirement to use the tool for job duties are the most significant decision factors. Vendors’ persuasion and the capability of the tool to achieve better outcomes than others are least significant. Statistical correlations between the decision factors were obtained. They all suggest near-absolute correlations.

The practical implications of these findings are vital. They help to unravel factors that promote students’ interest in BIM education, and contribute toward the development of software selection models that are relevant to professionals and incipient businesses.

Future studies on decision analysis can be built on the findings also. In particular, the decision factors help in developing creative cognitive solutions to BIM adoption issues. They also help on the challenge posed by the constraints of knowledge diffusion within and across project teams, and in designing tools that meet the requirements of non-design disciplines who also play vital roles in the BIM project environment.

The operational phase of a building's lifecycle is receiving increasing attention, as it consumes an enormous amount of energy and results in tremendous detrimental impacts on the environment. While energy simulation can be applied as a tool to evaluate the energy performance of a building in operation, the emergence of Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology is expected to facilitate the evaluation process with predefined and enriched building information. However, such an approach has been confronted by the challenge of interoperability issues among the related application software, including the BIM tools and energy simulation tools, and the results of simulation have been seldom verified due to the unavailability of corresponding experimental data. This study aims to explore the interoperability between the commonly used energy simulation and BIM tools and verifies the simulation approach by undertaking a case study.

With Autodesk Revit and EnergyPlus selected as the commonly used BIM and energy simulation tools, respectively, a valid technical framework of transferring building information between two tools is proposed, and the interoperability issues that occur during the data transfer are studied. The proposed framework is then employed to simulate the energy consumption of a single-family house, and sensitivity analysis and analysis on such parameters as schedule are conducted for building operations to showcase its applicability.

The simulation results are compared with monitored data and the results from another simulation tool, HOT2000; the comparison reveals that EnergyPlus and HOT2000 predict the total energy consumption with a difference from the monitoring data of 8.0 and 7.1%, respectively.

This research shows how to efficiently use BIM to support building energy simulation. Relevant stakeholders can learn from this research to avoid data loss during BIM model transformation.

This research explores the application of BIM for building energy simulation, compares the simulation results among different tools and validates simulation results using monitored data.

In performative architectural design, daylighting is a crucial design consideration; however, the evaluation of daylighting in the design process can be challenging. Immersive environments (IEs) can create a dynamic, multi-sensory, first-person view in computer-generated environments, and can improve designers' visual perception and awareness during performative design processes. This research addresses the need for interactive and integrated design tools for IEs toward better-performing architectural solutions in terms of daylighting illumination. In this context, building information modeling and performance simulations are identified as critical technologies to be integrated into performative architectural design.

This research adopts a design science research (DSR) methodology involving an iterative process of development, validation and improvement of a novel and immersive tool, HoloArch, that supports design development during daylighting-informed design processes. HoloArch was implemented in a game engine during a spiral software development process. HoloArch allows users to interact with, visualize, modify and explore architectural models. The evaluation is performed in two workshops and a user study. A hybrid approach that combines qualitative and quantitative data collection was adopted for evaluation. Qualitative data analyses involve interviews, while quantitative data analyses involve both daylighting simulations and questionnaires (e.g. technology acceptance model (TAM), presence and system usability scale (SUS)).

According to the questionnaire results, HoloArch had 92/100 for SUS, a mean value of 120.4 for presence questionnaire (PQ) and 9.4/10 for TAM. According to the simulation results, all participants improved the given building's daylighting performance using HoloArch. The interviews also indicated that HoloArch is an effective design tool in terms of augmented perception, continuous design processes, performative daylighting design and model interaction. However, challenges still remain regarding the complete integration of tools and simultaneous simulation visualization. The study concludes that IEs hold promising potentials where performative design actions at conceptual, spatial and architectural domains can take place interactively and simultaneously with immediate feedback.

The research integrates building information modeling (BIM), performative daylighting simulations and IEs in an interactive environment for the identification of potentials and limitations in performative architectural design. Different from existing immersive tools for architecture, HoloArch offers a continuous bidirectional workflow between BIM tools and IEs.

The aim of this research is to examine if building information modelling (BIM) is feasible as an information management platform to determine a financially and environmentally affordable housing refurbishment solution based on the life cycle cost (LCC) and LCC calculation.

A case study in conjunction with BIM simulation approach using BIM tools (Autodesk Revit and IES VE/IMPACT) was adopted to identify the feasibility of BIM for the simultaneous formulation of LCC and life cycle assessment in housing refurbishment.

This research reveals that BIM is a suitable for the information management platform to enable construction professionals to consider trade-off relationship between LCC and life cycle assessment simultaneously, and determine the most financially and environmentally affordable refurbishment solution. The interoperability issues in data exchange among different BIM tools and unstandardized BIM object libraries with incomplete data sets of construction materials are recognised as the major shortcomings in a BIM system. Essential remedial actions to overcome the shortcomings in the current BIM tools are identified.

Actual housing information and various refurbishment materials for the BIM simulation are limited.

This research contributes to supporting construction professionals to prepare practical BIM adoption for the integration of the LCC and life cycle assessment that can significantly improve early decision-makings on sustainable housing refurbishment.

This research will contribute to providing proper remedial actions to overcome the shortcomings in the current BIM tools, and insights for construction professionals to understand the implication of BIM-embedded housing refurbishment.

This study aims to focus on the four user characteristics of innovation diffusion (availability, observability and trialability [AOT], simplicity, relative advantage [RA] and interoperability) to observe their influence on building information modelling (BIM) usage. This study focuses on the Kenyan construction industry, specifically the building contractors.

This study uses purposive sampling and specifically focusses on active construction sites that met requirements needed for BIM usage to thrive. Data was collected manually using questionnaires (N = 62).

This paper contributes to the analysis of the current state of BIM usage by the Kenyan construction industry specifically among building contractors and confirms that Kenya is at the early majority adopters’ stage of diffusion characterised by low BIM usage. In terms of correlation, this study found out that AOT had a strong positive correlation with usage, RA had a moderate positive correlation with usage, simplicity had a weak positive correlation with usage and interoperability had no correlation with usage.

This study gives a clear trend on BIM usage among building contractors to assist potential BIM users make informed decision. The recommendations in this study can be adopted by any late adopter jurisdiction whose structure of the construction industry is similar to Kenya’s.

This paper highlights variables that enable or subdue BIM usage. It goes further to localise and contextualise the barriers for deeper understanding of what makes these barriers be major hindrances towards BIM usage and giving practical solutions to these barriers.

The purpose of this study is to design a zero-energy home, which is known to be capable of balancing its own energy production and consumption close to zero. Development of low-energy homes and zero-net energy houses (ZEHs) is vital to move toward energy efficiency and sustainability in the built environment. To achieve zero or low energy targets in homes, it is essential to use the design process that minimizes the need for active mechanical systems.

The methodology discussed in this paper consists of an interfacing building information modeling (BIM) tool and a simulation software to determine the potential influence of phase change materials on designing zero-net energy homes.

BIM plays a key role in advancing methods for architects and designers to communicate through a common software platform, analyze energy performance through all stages of the design and construction process and make decisions for improving energy efficiency in the built environment.

This paper reviews the literature relevant to the role of BIM in helping energy simulation for the performance of residential homes to more advanced levels and in modeling the integrated design process of ZEHs.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the implications building information modelling (BIM) is having on the building energy modelling (BEM) and design of buildings. It addresses the issues surrounding exchange of information throughout the design process, and where BIM may be useful in contributing to effective design progression and information availability.

Through review of current design procedures and examination of the concurrency between architectural and thermophysical design modelling, a procedure for information generation relevant to design stakeholders is created, and applied to a high-performance building project currently under development.

The extents of information key to the successful design of a buildings energy performance in relation to its architectural objectives are given, with indication of the level of development required at each stage of the design process.

BIM offers an extensible medium for parametric information storage, and its implementation in design development offers the capability to include BEM parameter-integrated construction information. The extent of information required for accurate BEM at stages of a building’s design is key to understanding how best to record performance information in a BIM environment.

This paper contributes to the discussion around the integration of concurrent design procedures and a common data environment. It presents a framework for the creation and dissemination of information during design, exemplifies this on a real building project and evaluates the barriers experienced in successful implementation.

Despite the construction industry's significant impact on high energy use and a growing carbon footprint, technologies like Green BIM help to optimize natural resources, reduce pollution, use sustainable space and work on human comfort and health. But the trend in a holistic approach is minimal. Thus, the paper aimed to systematically investigate Green BIM research and implementation trends using a mixed-method and also show the prospects of holistic Green BIM implementation.

First, we conducted a Scientometrics analysis on the topic using the Scopus database for the time interval of (2013–present). Secondly, the Qualitative Content Review method asserted the Scientometrics analysis result. Lastly, exploratory research was done on secondary data to compare the AEC industry trend for a comprehensive view.

The merged findings confirmed the partial implementation of Green BIM and of which 43% of research focused only on energy analysis. Despite the potential of BIM and the interrelationship among green building parameters, the result showed other aspects of green building and sustainable design parameters as green material selection, sustainable site, waste management and water-use efficiency not comprised.

The authors propose a new conceptual framework for integrating green building parameters, BIM tools and green building assessment tools in a life cycle of a project that adds into the sustainability of the Architectural, Engineering and Construction sector. The study would help to provoke researchers, software developers and practitioners for further innovative effort in holistic Green BIM implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and discuss potential applications of emerging Building Information Model (BIM) and related technologies as applied to healthcare facilities. The paper presents example of applications of digital tools enabled by BIM that support more integrated outcomes for complex healthcare projects.

Paper formulation by a transdisciplinary author group with ideas and approaches developed through discussions and writing to explore future research directions. Initial ideas are supplemented by a literature review with examples introduced where relevant.

BIM as a front-end construction engineering tool is quite mature. Application of BIM and related tools to support complex healthcare at the precinct scale, for facilities management (FM), including improved user experience (UX) has been limited but shows great promise to support complex healthcare projects.

The research presented is limited and exploratory as it represents the first step by this group to investigate an integrated approach to digital healthcare design and FM.

The paper introduces the considerable benefits of BIM models, and related tools for FM and/or UX (both staff and patients) to save time, money and improves efficiency and accuracy in healthcare facilities.

The transdisciplinary author group brought broad perspectives to the potential benefits of combining accurate data-rich legacy building models with other digital tools for increased integration and co-ordination at all life stages of a healthcare precinct.