BIM-Based Collaborative Building Process Management

Today, perhaps more than ever before, a technological revolution can modify the building sector in all its single aspects, greatly affecting services, production, supplies. Freehand drawing, drafting machines or CAD have represented innovative tools in graphic representations. In such cases, the evolution of tools for the productivity of the sector has improved and quickened the actual design, but nothing more. With BIM, instead, the innovation of tools has entailed a methodological innovation for the whole sector, owing to virtual reality simulations, and not only to graphic representations. Several basic principles and their various evolutions worldwide can help understand the BIM phenomenon in order to achieve its mature use.

The exploitation of potentialities offered by ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) can ease an efficient information management but to do that it is first of all necessary to use a standardized and univocal system for classifying, defining, collecting and archiving information related to the whole lifecycle of a building, from the initiative stage to its end of life. The aim of this chapter is to provide a proposal on how to structure such system, on the basis of an analysis of the state-of-the-art of the classification systems currently available. Such analysis led to define a new univocal classification and denomination system that structures each object (from the simplest—such as the construction product—to the more complex—such as the entire constructed facility or infrastructural work) within a very precise hierarchical scale. Moreover, standardized datasheets for data collection of construction products, in situ elements and assembled systems are described.

The issue of BIM libraries and of standards for defining BIM objects useful for the information flow in the building process, is object of particular attention by the professionals of the building industry, also owing to various international research programs, among which of particular relevance there is the experience of the British National BIM Library under the umbrella of the NBS AAVV (BIM Object Standard V, 2.0, NBS, 2018 [1]). BIM technology, currently viewed by many as a driving force for the development and innovation of the building sector, requires operational standards useful to guarantee the sharing of information and especially information that it may be used by all professionals involved in the process AAVV (Level of development specification 2013, BIM Forum, 2013 [3]). The development of interoperable BIM libraries is a necessary condition for this to take place and it is a fundamental step to facilitate the dissemination of BIM in the entire process AAVV (Il processo edilizio supportato dal BIMM: l’approccio INNOVance, Collana INNOVance Edilstampa, 2017 [2]). The libraries of BIM objects, in fact, must guarantee quality and coherence in terms of geometry, related information content and expected behavior within the scope of a model and of procedural operations in general. In particular, the information content must be such to meet process requirements, which is not something obvious given the complexity of the sector. Such requirements are fundamental to allow professionals to be able to use BIM with no hesitation whatsoever when managing the entire process, starting from the design to the management of the actual constructed facility (AAVV (2012) Common BIM Requirements 2012, vols 1–12. COBIM V1.0 Finland [4]). This chapter illustrates the process for defining BIM libraries, whose information content is strictly based on the structure developed with the INNOVance database. The latter, owing to the exhaustiveness of the categories and technical datasheets used, offers an overarching and flexible support, capable of evolving depending on the information needs defined by the professionals of the sector. Therefore, the objects based on said database guarantee the abovementioned requirements of coherence and completeness. The indications provided below were drawn up during the realization of BIM objects supported by the INNOVance database, and concern the choice of the objects, the encoding for the database, the modeling, the verification of coherence, of information completeness and of interoperability. Moreover, indications have been provided on the contents and modalities for the graphic presentation of the objects.

The paradigm of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) involves data management and the interconnection between machines-objects-people and processes. The key words of the revolution underway are:

Compared to the previous industrial revolutions (18th century: mechanical loom vs. iron and steel; 19th century: production line vs. reinforced concrete, 20th century: automation manufacturing vs. precast concrete), today buildings are fully involved in Industry 4.0, alongside all other industrial sectors and services sectors. Therefore, the new approach to production and the use of products involves objects, subjects and processes, integrated among each other through the generation of common information in continuous evolution. Such information needs to be collected (in a structured way), processed (precisely and statistically), redistributed (openly and transparently). With regard to the quality of the works and to the competitiveness of the sector, Regulation no. 305/2011 (European Commission, Regulation (EU) No 305/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council, Official Journal of the European Union, Strasbourg, [5]) obliges all producers to declare the technical characteristics of construction products before their commercialization. Today such information on products must be made available in an open and standardized form (Reg. no. 1025/2012, par. 3), guaranteeing data transparency for the public and private sectors. In the building sector, the main means to convey information has historically been represented by designs and related documents. In the first technological transit, from the drafting machine to CAD (Computer Aided Design), not much changed, if not in a merely technological sense, more than in a procedural sense. The use of CAD (vector software), as in the case of the drafting machine, involves the management of vectors and texts for the representation of concepts. The interaction between technicians takes place through the use of analogical or digital means, thus “static”, remote from the process.

The acronym BIM has been linked to several interpretations in the different phases of its maturity considering the tools, the processes, the method, etc. To comprehend the challenges in BIM implementation it is crucial to understand the context and the limitations that nowadays are shaping the boundaries of its development. On the one hand, this chapter describes some of the technological challenges in BIM application starting from the concept of object-oriented programming. It presents, among the others, a critical discussion about the time and cost integration in BIM (4D and 5D) and the use of open languages (such as IFC). On the other hand, the chapter explores the context of BIM application studying national and international standards and legislations, providing a map of the existing standards and their relations. Finally, a discussion about the evolution introduces by the ISO 19650 is proposed including a novel interpretation of the passage from LOD to LOIN.

This chapter covers the issues and benefits deriving from the introduction of digital processes and tools in enterprises in the building sector. A comparative analyzes is proposed between the current processes and the relevant information flows and the possibilities offered by the introduction of digital processes and tools. Starting from the different perspective given by the digital paradigm, the chapter analyzes how the increasing request for information and data and the need to produce information models that accompany the physical asset are changing the configuration of roles and relations between enterprises and the supply chain creating the need for new specialist management and collaboration structures (platforms) in the production phase. The second part of the chapter proposes a view on the possibilities offered by the introduction of machine learning systems for the management of information in enterprises. In particular, the potentialities of the current systems in organizing information and documents are analyzed for an improved management of the latter, both during the collection phase and with regard to the possibility to use the organization’s historical documents in order to define the analysis processes.

Considering the remarkable shift that the digitalisation is nowadays bringing about in the building sector, the chapter presents how data and information collected and managed during design and construction stages improve building operation and maintenance. In particular, the chapter focuses on how the great amount of dynamic data collected around assets during the operational stage is changing the way buildings are experienced and managed. The integration and sharing of information supported by collaborative environments and recent information technologies enhance the management of the built asset. Within that context, the chapter outlines benefits and challenges in adopting BIM-based processes for the operation and maintenance of buildings. Particularly, the chapter presents how an ordered and structured information management allows delivering buildings as service providers, extracting knowledge from real-time data for tracking user behaviours and designing user interactions with buildings. The results allow: (1) implementing workflows for enriching building information in the operational stage and, consequently, operating buildings with an increased value originated by information. (2) Assessing how buildings work in the operational stage, especially taking into consideration the influence of users. (3) Defining strategies for engaging different actors in building operations and informing them about the behaviours of both buildings and users. (4) Providing control strategies when unexpected behaviours (e.g., energy-hungry behaviours, unusual comfort conditions and FM-related failures) are registered. Considering the concept of Industry 4.0, also the collection, storage and fruition of data collected in real-time is considered for an improved building operation and maintenance.