A BIM-enabled Estimating Framework of Embodied Emissions of Building Materials for Optimization in Design Stage: A Case Study

Governments across the world are taking actions to address the high carbon emissions associated with the construction industry, and to achieve the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement towards carbon neutrality. Although the ideal of the carbon-emission reduction in building projects is well acknowledged and generally accepted, it is proving more difficult to implement. The application of building information modeling (BIM) brings about new possibilities for reductions in carbon emissions within the context of sustainable buildings. At present, the studies on BIM associated with carbon emissions have concentrated on the design stage, with the topics focusing on resource efficiency (namely, building energy and carbon-emission calculators). However, the effect of BIM in reducing carbon emissions across the lifecycle phases of buildings is not well researched. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the relationship between BIM, carbon emissions, and sustainable buildings by reviewing and assessing the current state of the research hotspots, trends, and gaps in the field of BIM and carbon emissions, providing a reference for understanding the current body of knowledge, and helping to stimulate future research. This paper adopts the macroquantitative and microqualitative research methods of bibliometric analysis. The results show that, in green-building construction, building lifecycle assessments, sustainable materials, the building energy efficiency and design, and environmental-protection strategies are the five most popular research directions of BIM in the field of carbon emissions in sustainable buildings. Interestingly, China has shown a good practice of using BIM for carbon-emission reduction. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the current research in the field is focused on the design and construction stages, which indicates that the operational and demolition stages have greater potential for future research. The results also indicate the need for policy and technological drivers for the rapid development of BIM-driven carbon-emission reduction.

Life cycle analysis (LCA) has become an essential tool in the construction sector, aligning with the principles of sustainable development goals. LCA enables construction managers to make informed decisions about building materials by comparing costs and environmental impacts at every stage of a product's life cycle, from cradle to grave. Construction professionals use specialized software tools for Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), which requires pre-processed building data and access to external expensive material databases. This complexity necessitates the involvement of specialists to effectively manage both the tools and the theoretical aspects of LCA. These requirements make performing LCA complex and necessitate the involvement of specialized professionals who possess the expertise to manage both the tools and the theoretical aspects of LCA. On the other hand, Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools are being developed to be more accessible and user-friendly across the sector.Recently, BIM software developers have introduced plugin tools designed to generate LCA reports using the geometry and data available from existing BIM models. This research aims to validate the results produced by these new tools and compare them with those from established specialized LCA assessment tools, aiming to uncover the advantages and challenges of integrating this new BIM workflow.The suggested work methodology for this research is to use a case study model of a single-family house project, with controlled construction systems and material parameters. The test will be divided into three stages. In the first stage, BIM tools and external software will be analyzed to detect comparable workflows and obtainable results. The second stage involves the case study input and testing in each platform to obtain the same result sets. The final stage consists of analyzing each result set to evaluate the advantages and problems of using each software, contrasting the necessity of specialized knowledge and technical procedures for operating each platform against the quality of the obtained carbon footprint results.The objective is to establish a framework for evaluating the applicability of carbon footprint results obtained from each platform. These results should equip construction managers with a comprehensive understanding of the utility of the available tools and ascertain whether relying on BIM LCA tools can effectively reduce the time and cost associated with conducting studies using external tools. Based on the intended applications of the LCA results and certification requirements, managers can make informed decisions on whether to utilize BIM tools or invest in specialized software solutions.

Building energy simulation has become an important method for reducing energy use and carbon dioxide emissions in sustainable building design. In the last decade, we have witnessed the employment of building information model (BIM) and internet technologies to be harnessed for energy-efficient building design. In this research the data exchange between a Building Information Model (BIM) and a Building Energy Model (BEM) is investigated. In previous research energy simulation engines are integrated into the BIM application for BIM users to evaluate the design directly at the conceptual design stage. After the conceptual design stage the energy analysis task is shifted to professional engineers. In a conventional process, engineers analyse the BEM, which has been previously exported manually from the BIM, and optimize the parameters in the BEM. These results are then used to manually update the BIM used in design. However, this process is cumbersome and error-prone as it is hard to keep the BEM up-to-date with the BIM, and the optimization of the parameters on the BEM cannot be easily synchronized back to the BIM model. The increasing uses of the internet for data exchange and new database technologies have the potential to change this. We employ service-oriented architecture (SOA) to connect the components of services in each side of BIM and BEM. Based on a critical study of data and schema in the BIM and the BEM model, we propose a SOA based BIM and BEM exchange framework that can be used to support the collaboration and information synchronization among the participants in a sustainable design project. This framework is exemplified using a case study.

Numerous researchers point out that in the early stages of architectural design many significant decisions are taken to directly affect functional qualities, performance of the building, aesthetics, and relationships of the building with the natural environment and climate, even if there is no certain and valid information to create satisfactory design solutions.This paper particularly focuses on the early stages of architectural design and searches for the opportunities provided by Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools, in terms of the concept of performance analysis and form seeking.The study also includes case study implementations which visualize the early processes of architectural design with benefits of BIM under different conditions to evaluate its opportunities during these design processes.A few case studies have been implemented to reveal how new BIM tools can help designers in these stages.As a result of the implementations, it has been understood that BIM is a powerful early stages of architectural design tool; not for designing, but for supporting design.

The objective of the research described in this article is to improve measurement, prediction and optimization of sustainable building material performance by integrating a decision-making framework for sustainable material selection of building materials with a building information modeling (BIM) tool. Integration of a BIM model with a decision-making tool and sustainable material selection addresses the difficulties of making decisions earlier in the design/build process and allows for specific sustainability trade-off analyses to be conducted, using the actual building conditions and characteristics. It is intended to improve the way building material data is utilized in a building throughout its life cycle, and to model the impact of design, maintenance, operations and occupant behavior modification decisions made in an effort to improve the building’s contribution to a sustainable infrastructure. Pertinent information contained within a BIM model is extracted, and utilized in decision making related to material selection and to the development of ‘what-if’ scenarios. Decision makers will be able to evaluate options for improving their building materials’ environmental sustainability performance. The research provides a new means for sharing data amongst various building modeling programs using a decision analysis model and a new tool for making design decisions related to sustainable building design.

In today’s world, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is not a new term in the construction industry. Although BIM has been adopted in the AEC industry for a few decades now, the BIM implementation cultivation pace between developed countries and developing countries such as many European which considered as BIM leaders and some Asian countries has still shown significant differences. In Malaysia, there are several remarkable building projects with BIM utilization but very limited in road and highways project. Despite BIM capabilities in facilitating designers during design stage, BIM implementation are still considered unfavourable within the highway design consultants in Malaysia. Many firms seem reluctant to migrate from their traditional 2D drafting centric design process to BIM design process due to several reasons such as high cost in software investment, inadequate knowledge and expertise on BIM and lack of promotion from the government or relevant authority. Although BIM can benefit the project throughout its life-cycle from preliminary to operation and maintenance stage, the coordination and integration during design stage can contributes to positive impacts in progressing towards efficient construction documentation and construction stage. BIM 3D integrated modelling during design stage (conceptual and detailed design) are deemed to facilitate a highway project in terms of optimization through early visualization, design for constructability, road safety enhancement, reduce error and time consumption during construction and early clash detection. Therefore, this paper is intended to gather preliminary outlooks and views from the present practitioners in the highway industry on challenges encounters by consultants using the current traditional design practices, BIM capabilities in transforming the current design approach and BIM adoption barriers in Malaysian highway industry. Series of interviews were conducted with the professionals involved in highway projects especially during the design stage and based on the findings from the interviews conducted, all highway design consultants from various disciplines are aware on how BIM can tackle the challenges of current traditional design practice with 3D modelling approach and collaborative working environment. Although the results showed that highway consultants are willing to migrate to BIM workflow, cost and lack of expertise, urges from government and understanding on BIM are among barriers which hinder the BIM adoption in highway industry.

The emerging policies on building energy performance, developed by governments to face growing environmental concerns, stress the need for means to predict the future performance of a scheme in order to ensure that the as-built project will meet regulations. Several methods may enable us to expeditiously make the link between a Building Information Model (BIM) and energy simulation tools during the design process. We can differentiate between energy evaluations accomplished within the BIM software and those requiring data transfer from the model to specific analysis tools. Likewise, we can make a distinction between evaluations applicable during the concept and the design phase. The intention of the research described in this paper was to gain insight into the technical abilities and to point out issues concerning the relation between BIM and energy simulation in the different stages of design, with an emphasis on the conceptual stage. Hence a concise overview of the appropriate literature has been made, followed by five case studies. We get acquainted with an arsenal of tools, some of which still in a scientific stage, and see all kinds of promising developments on the market, both from BIM applications and from energy simulation tools. Software used includes ArchiCAD, Revit, Sefaira, the Space Boundary Tool, EnergyPlus, SketchUp, Open Studio and the EPB software imposed by the Belgian government.

Interoperability and integration between design, analysis and fabrication in architectural practice allow building facade systems to be increasingly complex and non-standard. As customized building facade systems increase in contemporary buildings, it is important to adopt the integrated design process that aids problem solving and design-making in facade design. The primary goal of this study is to explore the integrated design process that incorporates building information modeling and parametric performance analysis tools in order to understand sustainability opportunities in sustainable facade fabrication. The integration of building information modeling (BIM) and parametric performance analysis tools poses a unique design process whose resolution has the potential to improve sustainability in built environment and facade fabrication efficiency. This paper uses an academic design research project, the Reading Pavilion located in the UNC Charlotte campus, as a case study to investigate the integrated design process of a building facade system, which was supported by quantitative data using BIM, parametric performance analysis, and rapid prototyping tools.

Building-information-modeling enabled life cycle assessment, a case study on carbon footprint accounting for a residential building in China

Low carbon urban rail transit station city integration based on building information modeling and sensor fusion

Calculation of embodied GHG emissions in early building design stages using BIM and NLP-based semantic model healing

This book, which addresses a very timely topic in the field of architectural engineering, is written by Francois Levy, who is a registered architect in Texas and has been practicing architecture since 1993. Levy has Master’s degrees in both Architecture and Architectural Engineering from the University of Texas in Austin, where he has also been lecturing since 1998. While his degrees must have provided him with a legitimate breadth of knowledge and the background to cover the topics offered in the book, it must be said that the topics included in the book appear to be presented mostly from an architect’s or an architecture point of view, as opposed to an architectural engineering point of view. The book includes an Introduction followed by 11 chapters on various topics related to the use of building information modeling (BIM) for sustainable design of small-scale projects, and per the author’s own claim it is meant to be “a useful guide to smalland medium-sized firms that hold a commitment to sustainable design and are contemplating or undertaking the transition to BIM.” The introduction chapter has a very insightful overview of purpose, which helps readers understand the scope and set the right expectations for the book. From this description, the content proposed sounds reasonable and the style of the book meshes well with the intended purpose. The 11 chapters of the book cover some sustainable design principles and approaches for small-scale buildings, using BIM as a design and/or illustrating platform. Fairly broad sustainable design topics are included in this book, which include passive cooling, passive heating, onsite energy, building hydrology, and lifecycle analysis. The 11 self-contained chapters addressing these topics can mostly be used independently without or with little need of reference to other chapters except the first two chapters. The introduction and the following first two chapters serve as introduction to BIM and sustainable design, and any reader of the book should visit all three before going into their chapter of interest. For example, Chapter 1 has a discussion on “BIM for Design” (p. 7), where the author presents a very good case, stating that “many architects view BIM primarily as a documentation tool, rather than a design tool. This is a missed opportunity.” This is true and well said. However, we think that there are also two missed opportunities by the author: (1) the book addresses mainly architects, but the rest of a design team (comprising various disciplines of engineering) agreeing with the concept of BIM for design would be equally important; and (2) the book addresses only small business industry members, as opposed to also addressing some opportunities in the educational sector. We think that the book has potential to be a useful reference for capstone design classes of Architectural Engineering programs, or collaborative work between many architecture and engineering programs at universities where architectural engineering programs do not exist. The entire Chapter 1 would be a useful reference in many capstone design classes. Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of the BIM software available, namely: ArchiCAD, REVIT, and Vectorworks, along with some complementary software. A few things should be noted here: (1) only REVIT architecture is presented instead of including other REVIT discipline modules, such as REVIT Structure; and (2) there is an interesting argument made by the author that despite popular belief, REVIT is not the most commonly used BIM application. The author presents some market research stating that Vectorworks has a larger share of users than REVIT. The authors of this review have a different experience with this (i.e., REVIT seems the most commonly used); however, we will admit that we did not do market research on this. We know that REVIT is commonly adopted in larger firms and in college-level drafting classes in architectural engineering programs. The author also states “In the interest of full disclosure, the author’s primary BIM application is Vectorworks Architect.” Therefore, the readers should note that there is a bias for this software throughout the book, in terms of the tools, capabilities, and case studies. The author is commended, however, for referring to the more comprehensive BIM Handbook by Eastman et al. (2008) for topics not covered in his book. Writing and organization of the book are both generally verywell done. The narrative style of the book is not only easy to read and follow, but also enjoyable. A notable feature of the book is that each topic is accompanied by a case study, which provides applicable context for readers to further understand the sustainable design principles. Although very useful even in their current and brief content and style, we think that the case studies could benefit greatly from more depth and images presented in color (instead of in black and white). We also understand, however, that such color images would have increased the cost of the book considerably, and therefore a compromise must have been made. Regarding the relationship between BIM and sustainable design, the author makes an important and convincing argument that “BIM creates opportunities for the quantitative assessment of design options.” The authors of this review agree with these comments to a certain extent; however, it should be acknowledged that contemporary BIM programs are not able to do sophisticated quantitative engineering assessments without the use of another software used independently. For example, it is not possible to design and select the lightest structural system that is able to pass all code requirements within available BIM software. Therefore, structural engineers often model and design their structures independently based on safety and code-checks while considering cost and material selections (i.e., indirectly, the sustainability) in mind. Later they bring their designs into BIM for coordination with other disciplines. This flow in contemporary design processes could have been acknowledged a little more accurately. Another argument the author makes is that BIM creates “great opportunities for coordination and collaboration,”which is beneficial for sustainable design. We agree with this comment; however, we

The selection of building materials from various available alternatives is a critical process affected by many complicated factors. Every single element in a building has a specific function to perform. This necessitates a proper selection of material from the various available alternatives, which generally differ in their quality, performance, and cost. To make the most practical choice, the owner wants the building's function to perform with maximum quality at the minimum possible cost, and this is the principle of value engineering. Therefore, a determination has been made to identify the criteria impacting selecting each element and how close it is to achieving the project's goal. Each alternative has been evaluated, and its quality, and cost scores have been calculated. Implementing a value engineering process is challenging, and it needs much effort and many brainstorming sessions to be achieved. Therefore, this study has proposed a framework to automate the value engineering process and integrate it into selecting building materials. Moreover, this process was accelerated and facilitated by using innovative computer technology such as building information modeling (BIM) that has been widely used in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. The scientific paper touched on determining the evaluation of the elements of choosing the doors and determining the criteria affecting their quality by conducting a field survey with specialized engineers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to know the factors affecting the selection of doors. The scientific paper also reviewed the case study of a hospital buildingwhere the elements of the building's internal doors are chosen from among eight alternatives using the proposed evaluation processes. And then, chose the building information model as a database that facilitates information entry and selected from the available alternatives. The results were shown automatically and gave a summary of them. The research results showed the six most important criteria affecting the process of selecting interior doors for buildings: fire resistance, acoustic insulation, humidity resistance, aesthetic, durability, and maintenance. Based on this study, the best alternative for interior doors to buildings will be chosen from among the eight available alternatives. This methodology will make it easier for the decision-maker to choose the appropriate section according to the previous criteria. Key words: Alternatives, factors, criteria, value engineering, BIM, fire resistance, acoustic insulation, humidity resistance, aesthetic, durability, maintenance.

BackgroundToday, the architectural, engineering, construction, and operation (AECO) industry is motivated to employ graduates educated about Building Information Modeling (BIM) tools, techniques, and processes, which help them to better integrate visualizations and data into their projects. In line with today’s AECO industry necessities and government mandates, globally active BIM educationalists and researchers are designing BIM educational frameworks, curricula and courses. These educationalists and researchers are also generating solutions to the obstacles faced during integration of BIM education into tertiary education systems (TESs). However, BIM researchers have taken few efforts recently to provide an overview of the level of BIM education across the globe through review and analysis of the latest publications associated with BIM education in TESs. Hence, this study attempts to fill this gap by providing a review of the efforts of globally active educationalists and researchers to educate AECO students about BIM in the context of advanced engineering education with visualization.MethodIn our study, an investigation of texts in the field of academic BIM education was conducted. Keywords such as “BIM education”, “BIM curriculum”, “BIM course”, and “visualization in engineering education” were used to search for publications ranging from 2010 to the present day. Textual and content analysis were employed to arrange BIM-related qualitative textual data into similar sets of conceptual categories for the purpose of analyzing trends in today’s global academic BIM education research.ResultsThis study generated six conceptual categories by arranging qualitative textual data from 70 collected BIM publications in order to build an understanding of active BIM educationalists and researchers efforts: (a) identifying needs for BIM in tertiary educational institutions (TEIs), (b) identifying essential BIM skillsets for BIM education, (c) developing BIM educational frameworks, (d) developing BIM curricula, (e) experimenting with BIM courses, and (f) developing strategies to overcome BIM educational issues. Through this process of review and analysis, current research gaps in academic BIM education across the globe are identified.ConclusionThis process of review and analysis of global BIM education research trends resulted in a conceptual categorization of BIM educationalists and researchers’ efforts in TES. This categorization and review of the collected publications can serve as a knowledge base for: (a) identifying major issues involved in BIM education, (b) developing strategies to incorporate BIM into TES, and (c) developing BIM frameworks and curricula in the context of tertiary education, which can assist BIM educators with taking BIM education in TES to the next level for visualization in advanced engineering education. Through analyzing global BIM education research trends, this study also provides future research suggestions on academic BIM education across the globe. Furthermore, our analysis highlights the relationship between current tertiary BIM education and visualization.

BIM(Building Information Modeling) ordering manuals and guidelines are diffused with the recent BIM activation. However, it is causing drawbacks such as an increase of work at each design stage and a decline of BIM application level that the standard of making up and managing BIM is vague and it includes comprehensive meaning. Therefore, this study aims to secure BIM work standard by establishing BIM making-out standard based on LOD(Level of Detail) classification considering domestic design process. It compared each definition of LOD by analyzing domestic and foreign BIM guideline examples, and figured out insufficiency of existing domestic and foreign design process and BIM guidelines. Moreover, it drew architects' work articles for promoting the progression of the efficient design process, and analyzed BIM requirements on design process, dividing BIM application scale by field. Through this analyzing process, it finally established BIM making-out standard classified by design process. The effects of establishing BIM making-out standard would include improving a division of labor and cooperation environment by creating integrated BIM model on design stages, advancing work efficiency by preventing a repetition and an increase of work, and upgrading project completeness and design quality. Besides, it can secure BIM work standard by clarifying responsibility for working steps. BIM making-out standard established by this study will contribute to developing the future BIM work standard document and BIM guideline as a data base.