As a professional in the building and construction industry you’ve no doubt been hearing the two latest buzz terms; BIM (building information model ling), and green building. Although both these ideas bring huge benefits to the industry and future building projects, the really exciting bit is where they intersect.
As the adoption of BIM software by architects and engineers rapidly increas es, we’ve hit a tipping point, with the majority of new building projects using BIM tools to document them more effi ciently. This is especially true for large commercial and civic projects where the time and cost savings are so great that the clients and/or local councils are requesting it.
BIM has greatly boosted productivity and collaboration across project teams. Numerous case studies have been released praising the efficiency boost and the reduction of onsite errors.
Working parallel to this is the huge push towards green building and mak ing our new buildings as energy effi cient as possible. This is a key focus on commercial projects where councils and local bodies want to see buildings with high energy efficiency and green building ratings.
Cost life cycles are also playing a large role in the design of these build ings. Governments and corporations are spending more money upfront but counting on saving money over the life cycle of the building.
Herein lies the problem; as you can see from above, we suddenly had a huge boost in productivity (thanks to BIM), but now have a lot of extra essen tial processes layered on top (green building). What to do? Luckily as both BIM and green building are maturing, innovative solutions are being devel oped to help architects and designers to make better product and material selec tions, once again speeding up and streamlining their workflows.
It all starts with the BIM model or 3D virtual building model. Once the build ing is modelled or even in design devel opment stages, this 3D building model can be exported into a variety of for mats. This in turn can be exported into other softwares to help assess the green building and energy efficiency qualities of the design and make more informed product and material decisions.
The current most common export format is IFC. IFC is promoted by the Building Smart Alliance (buildingsmart.org.au) who work around the globe to promote the use of smarter BIM tools and, if not more importantly, the interoperability between different softwares.
Once a BIM model is developed, then starts the sustainability assessment. This is where countless extra value can be extracted from the BIM model, yielding an even larger return from your initial capital investment.
The first stop is energy efficiency soft ware. A once daunting task, the range of software now available allows you to import your BIM model and apply differ ent materials with a range of different performance ratings. This enables archi tects and designers to effortlessly adjust their material selections across entire projects or specific areas of the project. From here different materials and prod ucts can be applied to the BIM model to see the potential energy gains or losses and whether the investment in different ranges of materials will really achieve the desired affect for the project.
By processing energy efficiencies at the design phase of the project, archi tects and designers can be sure that their buildings are going to meet the required ratings, which is also comforting for their clients!
The next stop for our BIM model is a lifecycle cost analysis (often referred to as LCA). This process is a less talked about part of green building assess ment, however plays an important role. By comparing lifecycle costs of different building materials and combinations, new building projects can be more thoroughly assessed to see their true green ratings.
Traditionally LCA has been a very long process, taking into account thou sands of calculations and the relation ships between the uses of different materials. Because of this it has been reserved for larger (usually government funded) projects, often taking years of work. Luckily, once again, our BIM model is to the rescue.
Advanced software is now available that can calculate a life cycle analysis directly from your design’s building information model. Working in a similar way to energy efficiency software, you simply import your BIM model into the software (normally via the IFC format). Once imported you can apply material and product selections to the BIM model. The software then instantly cal culates a lifecycle cost analysis for the proposed design, allowing the design to quite accurately pin point which materials and/or products are bringing the buildings rating down and how it can be improved.
Until now lifecycle cost analysis wasn’t easily possible for smaller projects, but we are now seeing it used on smaller commercial projects and even housing developments.
By building Revit families and ArchiCAD objects for manufacturers, we are now able to include more of each product’s green rating information directly within the models.
Scott Barrington is CEO of Barrington Arch - Working with building product manufacturers from around the globe, his company builds Revit families and ArchiCAD smart objects of their prod ucts. These are available to architects and designers for free from BIMstop.com.
