Details of Research Outputs

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has implications for all processes and activities related to construction supply chain and can, thus, make significant contributions to lean construction process. It can be argued that BIM, as a design-centric technology with emphasis on sharing and collaboration, can be the ultimate solution to multiple challenges on today’s construction sites by improving and coordinating construction supply chain. The existing dimensions of BIM not only attend to most aspects of the construction work and processes, but the technology also has the potential to add further dimensions responding to other existing or future challenges. Most stakeholders with different BIM definitions endorse the centrality of design and the use of BIM as currently appropriate design technology, but it also needs to be recognized that all these processes and applications can work efficiently and effectively in construction with regard to many other dimensions of work by reducing design errors and by better information management, thus controlling cost, delays, and damages. The buildingSMART Alliance is developing an open standard approach to integrating facility management handover using the COBie spreadsheet to BIM. When the graphical model is used to perform energy analysis, two of the most common formats are IFC1 and gbXML. This paper will look into ways in which Artificial Neural Network (ANN)-COBie can help architects and engineers to perform HVAC analysis with the support of a BIM platform. Other applications e.g. HVAC load analysis and life-cycle cost analysis for any system or component associated with a building may be conducted using the ANNCOBie system that can be stored in the BIM authoring application and exported using IFC or gbXML to any analytic software. These applications’ associated future challenges will be briefly discussed.