Advances in Building Information Modeling

This paper presents the results from a comprehensive field study on BIM adoption and AEC integration targeting the Turkish AEC firms. The research objectives were to develop well-reasoned arguments supporting the role of BIM in the transformation of current business models in the Turkish AEC Industry as well as identifying the inclinations, challenges, and obstacles to BIM adoption. With in-depth interviews with industry representatives, the study returned valuable information that lead to context-dependent insights about the local AEC industry and influence of BIM adoption on all AEC operations. The findings from the study suggest that the existence of a rapidly growing interest in BIM-enabled processes and services due to local and global market dynamics and pressure. The influence of established business culture within the industry drastically affect perceptions towards the value propositions of BIM and IPD which are broadly known among the Turkish AEC firms which are different from the US and European counterparts. Results from this study motivate new discussions about BIM adoption and IPD from the perspective of the Turkish AEC Industry, and also provide arguments about the potential impacts of BIM deployment for the local and global construction projects which are undertaken by the Turkish AEC firms.

This paper presents an in-depth enquiry for a case in the current condition of BIM implementation in Turkey. The research study is based on the specific collaborative experiences of an architectural design firm and a contractor firm on a large scale public construction project. It seeks to address the requirement for comprehending the idea of integrated project delivery provided with the collaboration opportunities of the BIM technology. It intends to demonstrate how the fields of policy and process interlock in the BIM activity of the selected case. It also aims to exemplify the handicaps of partial BIM implementation in a complex building production process. The research methodology is content-analysis of the in-depth interviews with the managers of the current production process from both architectural and contractor firms. Questions were designed to gather case-specific data in relation to the four fundamental features of the 3^rd generation production process defined by Cooper [4]. The research findings indicate that although the production requirements fit the 3^rd generation process, it is constrained by the public procurement law in force. It seems evident that there is a tension between the traditional workflow and the integrated process with increased productivity and quality that BIM enables and requires. This results in a noteworthy ratio of resource waste that the contractor has to compensate in this specific case. This study contributes to the ongoing research and discussion on the drawbacks of BIM implementation, by illustrating the requirement for the redefined and rearranged roles and processes of production with a precisely guaranteed resource economy and increased quality of work equally for all parties. It presents an example case for BIM implementation and process management to illustrate the current state of the public construction industry in Turkey.

The Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry is in a transition process that deeply affects the long-established ways of collaboration to complete a project. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is at the core of this process by enabling all the project data digitally available to all stakeholders. In recent years, AEC firms have spent great efforts and resources to implement BIM in their business tasks and they have both common and different reasons for the BIM-centered transformation. These reasons have to do with the pre-defined driving factors that initiate the utilization of BIM. In order to achieve a successful BIM implementation process, these driving factors need to be identified. The primary objective of this study is to systematically identify the drivers of the BIM implementation process using a high rise building project as a case study. In this respect, an extensive literature review was conducted to determine the driving factors that will be used for detailed analysis for a case study. A total of 42 papers were selected related to the BIM implementation process. An initial list of 44 drivers was identified and among these drivers, the frequency was calculated based on the total number of citations. This initial list was modified to obtain a more refined list by grouping/merging similar factors and deleting some irrelevant ones. Three levels of influences namely, industry-level, firm-level and project-level were defined to distinguish the perspectives of the industry, companies, and project teams. A high rise construction project was selected as a case study to analyze the identified drivers. Since high rise buildings consist of complex systems, BIM implementation is crucial for these types of projects. Interviews were conducted with five experts working at Turner International Turkey, which acts as the project management firm of this project. The interviewees were asked to specify the importance level of the listed driving factors on a 1–5 Likert scale. The average ratings for each driver were calculated. Additionally, interviewees were also asked to share their own experiences during the BIM implementation process for the selected project. A comparison of the literature and the case study reveals the key points that are discussed in the paper.

Building Information Modeling is being rapidly adopted in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. Due to its positive impact on project quality, interdisciplinary collaboration and the reduction of construction costs, the BIM adoption rate is even higher in complex construction projects that require hi-end architectural and engineering design solutions. From this perspective, this chapter presents a case study project regarding BIM implementation in a large scale healthcare and medical education facility project. Focusing on the facility design process, the deployment of BIM methods and related techniques are investigated in detail along with significant benefits and implementation issues. The chapter includes a literature review on the advantages of BIM in healthcare and education projects and provides an in-depth inquiry of Cerrahpaşa Healthcare and Education Facility which is under development as one of the largest healthcare and medical education projects in Turkey. The evaluation involves specific design and assessment tasks from the case study such as design reviews, project coordination and immersive VR visualizations. The findings from the case study suggest task-specific advantages of BIM for addressing the complex design problems of large-scale hospitals also significant challenges as compared to conventional design and project development methods.

The construction sector has difficulty in catching the rapidly developing technology era. While the sectors are rapidly adapting themselves to the new era, firms that do not invest in innovation lose their value at a fast pace. When we look at the Fortune 500 list, it is seen that the biggest leap is made by companies in the IT sector. However, the situation is observed to be the opposite for construction companies. Despite the enormous investment costs and the huge risks involved, construction companies are unable to compete with the leaders of the digital world and falling down in the list. The losses of time and cost are increasing in the construction sector which lags behind in the digitizing world. The systematic analysis of these losses with analytical methods remains limited and there are problems in project management approaches. The industry today invests into digital transformation with Building Information Modeling (BIM) to deal with these problems in the construction sector and to produce a solution according to their dynamics in the digital world. BIM is the digital twin model of actual construction consisting of data-rich 3D objects. Accurate management of a data-rich model is possible with data management techniques. In order to fully benefit from this digital reflection of construction projects, the sector needs to establish processes based on basic theories of digital data management. This study is designed to provide a methodology in which the BIM 4D and 5D processes are handled as integrated and business intelligence approaches. While approaching Information Modeling from Building perspective, some basic approaches to data science have been integrated with 4D and 5D processes. The main objective of the study is to contribute to the digitalization process and to present a proposal for the application of the business intelligence in BIM processes.

Management of running costs to approach productivity indices between planned and actual is an important topic for BIM-based cost management systems. In the context of conventional BIM management, it is expected to get more detailed models as the design decisions developed. On the other hand, in the complex structure of project deliveries, where the construction phase is started and the design decisions are not completed yet, alternative procedures are required to manage outputs for both early and detailed stages of the design in the same model environment. In this chapter, the M9 Ikitelli-Ataköy underground line project was analyzed to decide the most proper scheduling workflows to generate survey reports of confined wall systems. While the length value is required to estimate cost alternatives of interior cladding, bill of quantities are going to be measured for calculation of surface area completed from the same model assembly. On the contrary, the system is assembled with both architectural and structural model elements, thus, the measurement data from length and area values cannot be pulled out to table list by default scheduling features of modelling software. When the BIM model elements hold the data, but those can not be inferred as required information, alternative information acquirement methodologies were reviewed and compared. During the study, the scope of BIM ontology was formed by such BIM platforms as Revit and its associated extensions Dynamo and Roombook. At the end of the study, it is aimed to present practical advantages of extensions at the automation of cost estimation and preparing bill of quantities in the BIM environment.

The construction industry is globally known as one of the most hazardous industries. Safety in construction is affected by many factors such as the behavior of workers, site conditions, the design and the implementation of the safety measures. Falls from height and hits by moving or falling objects are the most common types of accidents at construction sites and lead to serious injuries and fatalities. Researchers have been looking for solutions to reduce fall incidents at construction sites. Health and safety (H&S) experts usually follow traditional methods to plan and employ safety measures at sites. These safety planning methods are mainly based on reviewing 2D drawings to identify the risks and associated hazards and have some important deficiencies. First of all, the efficiency of safety planning depends on the experience of H&S experts. More importantly, it is difficult to identify the potential hazards from a 2D drawing while the project is progressing. Building Information Modeling (BIM) can overcome the challenges observed with the traditional safety planning processes. Hazards in a project and the related safety measures should be continuously identified throughout the construction. Since BIM is a 3D model-based process that assists the stakeholders not only to construct and manage but also to plan and design structures; BIM can provide an efficient solution to plan and design the safety measures of a construction project both during the design and construction phases. In addition, the safety review of buildings can be more effectively performed with a 3D building information model. In this study, “Automatic Fall Safety Review (AFSR)” rule checking tool is developed by using Dynamo, the open-source visual programming add-in for Autodesk Revit. This tool analyzes a 3D building model in Revit, and automatically identifies the hazardous places in a building and shows the related safety measures for preventing falls from height in particular. This paper presents the details of the AFSR tool and demonstrates its application for an 8-storey residential building.

Low performance in occupational health and safety can result in accidents having severe consequences or in near-misses. Furthermore, it can distract a smooth, efficient and effective workflow as well as reducing workers’ motivation. Based on lean principles, accidents or near-misses can be described as waste. BIM can be a potential tool for enhancing lean as well as occupational health and safety performance in construction sites. Based on an in-depth literature review, this paper aims to investigate the role and ways of usage of BIM in the construction project management processes to reduce accident rates in construction sites and to increase efficiency through the elimination of wastes in the processes in sites based on the lean management tools and principles. This paper is intended to be beneficial for both building professionals and academics.

The development of computable building regulations is an important factor for shortening the communication of building code provisions and automated code compliance checking. The representation of building regulations plays an important role in a computer-readable format which recognizes and understands certain aspects of the domain knowledge in compliance checking of building regulations. It allows compliance checking of a building model according to building regulations, codes and standards, and it evaluates the building model with its building elements. The studies have continued to the present to obtain data from legal sources and to create an appropriate computable representation of building regulations. In this research, the studies on domain knowledge representation of computable building regulation compliance checking are reviewed in detail based on the literature in the last 50 years. It also discusses the languages and methods of the studies under common titles such as Human Languages, Formal Languages, Artificial Intelligence Methods, Markup Language Methods and Semantic Web Methods and also reviews the languages and methods which are used in the representation of building regulations.

The Architecture, Engineering, Construction (AEC) and Facility Management (FM) industry is under pressure to move towards technological innovations as well as sustainability. New technologies are of great importance to sustainable design and construction processes by providing the means to act efficiently. Building Information Modeling (BIM) as the state-of-the-art technology in the industry provides a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics and information resources of a facility by forming a reliable basis to manage the processes and decisions during its entire life cycle. Despite the opportunities and potential advantages of BIM in sustainability for certification and decision-making, there are still challenges of integrated and collaborated systems. This paper addresses a more flexible and dynamic object-oriented approach for successful sustainable project deliveries. The aim is to provide a guideline through the development of an automated solution based on industry foundation classes (IFC) and a multi-agent system (MAS). The proposed approach comprises of three main phases, which are (1) development of sustainability assessment database and library, and extension of the criteria concerning the sustainability assessment methods into BIM software via property sets, (2) generation of the BIM model and its conversion to ifcXML and XML file formats and (3) evaluation of the data and presentation of the potential alternatives by extracting the related data from the converted file. It will support effective decision-making throughout the complete building life cycle by offering the possible criteria selection according to the user-provided project properties and certification level target.

The green building concept is recognized as a sustainable building strategy due to its benefits. Careful selection of sustainable building project has been identified as the easiest way to impose the sustainable building principles. The frame of building information modeling concerns all aspects of building design, construction and operations. In this respect, the current paper deals with design problems related to the selection of the most suitable project for building by group decision making. The proposed combinatorial optimization model for selection is based on the formulation of utility function considering some evaluation criteria corresponding to the green building concept. The experts’ opinion is taken into account by weighted coefficients. These coefficients express the importance of experts’ opinions corresponding to their experience and knowledge. The practical applicability of the proposed modeling approach is demonstrated in the case of selection of the most appropriate building project among a predefined set of projects. A project evaluation is done by using the given criteria and a group of experts. The final decision for the selection of the building project is a result of the aggregated evaluation of all experts. Each expert takes part in a group decision both through evaluations and the contribution expressed by weighted coefficients for the level of expertise and knowledge. The results showed that using weights for experts influence the final aggregate group decision for the selection of the project for green building.

Compliance of software is an important research issue as increasingly more digital applications are introduced in the area of thermal load calculations and energy analyses. Building Information Modeling (BIM), a relatively recent software technology in the line of such, is gaining more acceptance in energy and other sustainability-related analyses in AEC fields. This study assesses the suitability of BIM software in heating and cooling load calculations in buildings, using a sample building project in which thermal loads were calculated in both BIM software (Autodesk Revit) and industry-based MEP software (Carrier HAP). The results obtained in both software platforms were compared.

Previous studies show that the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry contributes up to 1/3 of global GHG emissions. With the aim of mitigating negative impacts of AEC industry on the natural environment, the integrated use of advanced technological instruments has been increasing in the last decade. The integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is one of the cutting-edge technological instruments, provides reduction of the total time spent and the improvement of the application while minimizing the environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of the facility. The main objective of this research study is to identify the benefits and challenges of BIM and LCA integration. In order to achieve the research objective of this study, a comprehensive literature review was conducted. Twenty-two types of benefits and seven types of challenges were identified for the integrated use of BIM and LCA in the AEC industry. The major contribution of this study is a comprehensive identification of the benefits and challenges of BIM-LCA integration. The results of this study may contribute to an increase in the utilization of the BIM-LCA integration in the AEC industry that in return allows decreasing negative environmental impacts of buildings through their life-cycle.

Beacon Technology is one of the wireless network technologies that work with Bluetooth Low Energy Technology (BLE). This technology was chosen to enable tracking of people and acquisition information in a high capacity underground station. The case study explained in this chapter initiated with the aim of designing an underground station that meets the transportation demands of the growing population by utilizing the facilities brought by Beacon technology to human life. With the help of the Beacon technology, along with the tracking of people, temperature control can be done by utilizing the temperature sensor inside the Beacon. In this chapter, a Beacon deployment that has been implemented for temperature control, staff and passenger tracking in an underground station in Istanbul have been explained in detail. The information acquired from the Beacons would contribute to the design of new underground stations and will facilitate the design decisions made for mitigating the risks in an emergency situation.

BIM (Building Information Modeling) is a new concept in construction industry and becomes popular worldwide in recent years. BIM is widely used by individuals, businesses and government agencies. It is applied in all phases of construction lifecycle from planning and designing to constructing and maintaining. It contains different structure types of buildings and infrastructures including water, refuse, electricity, gas, communication utilities, roads, railways, bridges, ports and tunnels. The application of BIM in the building industry is relatively widespread while the development of BIM method in the domain of infrastructure is yet in infancy. In this research, we would like to study the compatibility of BIM in modeling the bridge by using Autodesk Revit.

In this chapter, two data exchanging open standards that are mostly used in BIM, in the field of bridge modeling, including IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) and CityGML (Geography Markup Language) are reviewed. A parametric 3D bridge model is established with Autodesk Revit in order to carry out an experiment on bridge information modeling. The Raymond Barre Bridge in Lyon, France is used as case study.

We have divided the process of modeling the bridge to two steps. The first step is structuring the bridge elements, which means to generate the different parts of the bridge including the foundations, deck parts, diaphragms and bowstring; and the next step is to assemble the deck parts and placement of bridge elements. In the modeling process, a large number of customer families are created to represent the missing bridge entities that could result in the information loss in IFC file.

We show that the current IFC is not well developed for bridges and it is needed to define specific entities dedicated to the bridge domain. We also refer to the other research in this domain and their suggestions for extending IFC for bridges such as bridge data dictionary, information delivery manual, missing concepts and new entities for IFC-bridge. The results identify the urgency to improve IFC for infrastructure domain, especially for the IFC-Bridge.

Building information modelling BIM is relying on plenty of geospatial information such as buildings footprints. Collecting and updating BIM information is a considerable challenge. Recently, buildings footprints automatically extracted from high-resolution satellite images utilizing machine learning algorithms. Constructing required training datasets for machine learning algorithms and testing data is computationally intensive. When the analysis performs in large geographic areas, researchers are struggling from out of memory problems. The requirement of developing improved, fit memory computation methods for accomplishing this computation is urgent. This paper targeting to handling massive data size issue in buildings footprints extraction from high-resolution satellite images. This article established a method to process the spatial raster data based on the chunks computing. Chunk-based decomposition decomposes raster array into several tiny cubes. Cubes supposed to be small enough to fit into available memory and prevent memory overflow. The algorithm of the method developed using Python programming language. Spatial data and developed tool were prepared and processed in ArcGIS software. Matlab software utilized for machine learning. Neural networks implemented for extracting the buildings’ footprints. To demonstrate the performance of our approach, high-resolution Orthoimage located in Tucson, Arizona state in American United States was utilized as a case study. Original image was taken by UltraCamEagle sensor and contained (11888 columns, 11866 rows, cell size 0.5 foot, 564,252,032 pixels in 4 bands). The case image contained (1409 columns, 1346 rows, and 7586056 pixels in 4 bands). The full image is impossible to be handled in the traditional central processing unit CPU. The image divided to 36 chunks using 1000 rows and 1000 columns. Full analysis spent 35 min using Intel Core i7 processor. The output performance accuracy of the neural network is 98.3% for testing dataset. Consequences demonstrate that the chunk computing can solve the memory overflow in personal computers during buildings footprints extraction process, especially in case of processing large files of high-resolution images. The developed method is suitable to be implemented in an affordable lightweight desktop environment. In addition, building footprints extracted effetely and memory overflow problem bypassed. Furthermore, the developed method proved the high quality extracted buildings footprints that can be integrated with BIM applications.