Building Information Modelling for Whole-Building LCA: BIM4LCA

Abstract

Combining sustainable design strategies and building information modelling (BIM) can change traditional practices and efficiently lead to high-performance designs but is still impaired by deficient software interoperability. Automatic extraction is one of the most cited ways that BIM models can support environmental analyses. However, the reviewed literature does not confirm validation of such procedure by lifecycle assessment (LCA) experts and register incipient procedures to systematically increase implementation of BIM for LCA. This paper explores contributions offered by BIM to facilitate and improve whole building LCA to verify the hypotheses that (1) automatically extracting bills of materials from BIM models with level of development (LOD) 300 positively contributes to LCA processes (BIM+LCA); and (2) embedding environmental parameters and calculations directly into the model to extract calculated impacts instead of pure material quantities (BIM4LCA) can significantly enhance such contribution. We selected one case study to support analysing the variations between baseline (manual quantity survey from design documents) and BIM-supported automatic extraction of bill of materials, and the suitability of the model’s LOD to LCA purposes. Revit Architecture 2016 was used for modelling architectural, structural, plumbing and HVAC elements. We demonstrated that LOD 300-modelling is aligned to the accuracy level currently practiced in whole building LCA and that BIM models can indeed be prepared to facilitate LCA (BIM4LCA) through a low complexity, high effectiveness operational measure. This procedure provides reasonably quick feedback to support decision-making and enhance environmental performance of new building designs, until "Extraction, Transformation and Loading" (ETL) technologies or full interoperability become mainstream practice in the AECO industry.