A state-of-the-art review of built environment information modelling (BeIM)

Elements that constitute the built environment are vast and so are the independent systems developed to model its various aspects. Many of these systems have been developed under various assumptions and approaches to execute functions that are distinct, complementary or sometimes similar. Also, these systems are ever increasing in number and often assume similar nomenclatures and acronyms thereby exacerbating the challenges of understanding their peculiar functions, definitions and differences. The current societal demand to improve sustainability performance through collaboration, whole-systems and through-life thinking, is driving the need to integrate independent systems associated with different aspects and scales of the built environment to deliver smart solutions and services that improve the wellbeing of citizens. The contemporary object-oriented digitization of real world elements appears to provide a leeway for amalgamating modelling systems of various domains in the built environment which we termed as built environment information modelling (BeIM). These domains included Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Urban Planning and Design. Applications such as Building Information Modelling, Geographic Information Systems and 3D City Modelling systems are now being integrated for city modelling purposes. The various works directed at integrating these systems are examined revealing that current research efforts on integration fall into three categories: (1) data/file conversion systems, (2) semantic mapping systems and (3) the hybrid of both. The review outcome suggests that a good knowledge of these domains and how their respective systems operate is vital to pursuing holistic systems integration in the built environment

The potential of solar photovoltaic systems for residential homes in Lagos city of Nigeria

The development and use of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies worldwide is considered crucial towards fulfilling an increasing global energy demand and mitigating climate change. However, the potential of a solar PV-system is location specific, influenced by the local solar resource, energy demand and cost among other factors. The main aim of this study is to conduct a detailed assessment of the potential of solar PV-systems in residential buildings in Lagos Metropolitan Area, Nigeria. Nigeria has enormous solar energy potential, it is the most populous country in Africa and occupies a significant place in the development of Africa. Yet, it is a county with one of the lowest per capita electricity consumption in the world – at 149 kWh per capita for a population of about 170 million, about 7% of Brazil’s and 3% of South Africa’s. To achieve this goal, this study employed the survey of 150 residential buildings in three local government areas (LGAs) in Lagos State, Nigeria to obtain electric load data. HOMER Pro was used to size the PV-systems and to determine the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The computed energy results of the study for the base case scenario revealed the PV array, lead acid battery and the converter (inverter) of the PV-systems to be in the following range: 0.3 to 76 kW; 2 to 176kWh; and 0.1 to 13.2 kW respectively. Economic analysis revealed a LCOE of the systems in the range of 0.398 USD/kWh to 0.743 USD/kWh. The use of PV-system generated electricity in the dwellings has potential for an annual reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the range of 31.24 kgCO2eq to 7456.44 kgCO2eq. Clearly, the use of solar PV systems in residential buildings possesses potentials for enabling Nigeria to attain its climate change mitigation targets indicated in her National Determined Contributions (NDCs)

A study of the potential of cloud/mobile BIM for the management of construction projects

Successful management of construction projects in the Building Information Modelling (BIM) era of the 21st Century should include intelligent systems to support construction project teams in making informed decisions. Project teams are routinely faced with contractual obligations to deliver projects to meet key construction parameters such as cost, time, quality and more recently stringent sustainability requirements. These sorts of pressures are no longer new as widely acknowledged by experienced project managers, contract administrators and clients. The poor performance of one or more of the aforementioned parameters will undoubtedly compromise the entire project, thus leading to the dissatisfaction of clients. This paper explores the use of mobile/cloud BIM in facilitating the adoption of an integrated approach to project delivery through automated or semi-automated dynamic information sharing processes with the ultimate goal of improving construction performance. The adopted methodology involved the use of an online-administered questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews. The study identifies the adoption and uptake of cloud/mobile BIM technologies and the benefits and barriers

The importance of BIM capability assessment: An evaluation of post-selection performance of organisations on construction projects

Purpose: The emergence of building information modelling (BIM) has led to the need for pre-qualification and selection of organisations capable of working within a BIM environment. Several criteria have been proposed for the assessment of an organisation’s BIM capability during the pre-qualification and selection phase of projects. However, no studies have sought to empirically establish whether organisations selected on the basis of such criteria have actually been the most successful at delivering BIM on projects. The purpose of this paper is to address the aforementioned gap through a comparison of predicted BIM capability and post-selection performance. Design/methodology/approach: BIM capability of firms in a case study was predicted using 28 BIM pre-qualification and selection criteria, prioritised based on their perceived contribution to BIM delivery success from a survey of practitioners on BIM-enabled projects. The comparison of predicted BIM capability and post-selection performance was, on the other hand, achieved through the application of the Technique to Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution and fuzzy sets theory (Fuzzy-TOPSIS). Findings: Findings underscore the reliability of the 28 BIM pre-qualification and selection criteria as well as the priority weightings proposed for their use in predicting BIM capability and likelihood of performance. The findings have highlighted the importance of criteria related as previous BIM use experience as well as information processing maturity as critical indicators of the capability of organisations, particularly design firms. Originality/value: Overall, the findings highlight the need for prioritisation of BIM pre-qualification and selection criteria on the basis of their actual contribution to delivery success from post-selection evaluation of performance

Graph-based ontology reasoning for formal verification of BREEAM rules

Globally, the need to check regulation compliance for sustainability has become central in the delivery of construction projects. This is partly due to policies by various governments requiring existing and new buildings to comply with certain standards or regulations. However, the verification of whether a building complies with any particular standard or regulation has proven challenging in practice. The purpose of formal verification is to prove that under a certain set of assumptions, a building will adhere to a certain set of requirements, for example the minimum performance standards of key environmental issues. Compliance checking requires different criteria often difficult to straightforwardly define and combine in an integrated fashion for providing holistic interpretation to facilitate easy decision-making. Such criteria, their various flows and combinations can easily be dealt with using conceptual graph theories and Semantic Web concepts which allow rules to be imbued to facilitate reasoning. The aim of this study is to tap on conceptual graphs and Semantic Web concepts to develop a system for checking Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology (BREEAM) sustainability standard compliance in the French construction industry. A conceptual graph-based framework that formally describes BREEAM requirements and visually analyse compliance checking processes has been proposed. When implemented in a software that integrates conceptual graphs and Semantic Web knowledge, automatic reasoning allows both the logical specification and the visual interpretation to be displayed and further provides a semantic support for compliance checking information

BIM for construction site logistics management

Emerging Building Information Modelling (BIM) has been hailed as a revolutionary technology and information management process that facilitates collaboration and more efficient design and construction processes through innovative 3D modelling software, open access to information and multidisciplinary integration. The deadline of compliance to BIM level 2 on all public sector centrally procured construction projects has expired leaving many construction firms anxious to adopt BIM. Most common documented applications of BIM have been in the areas of architectural and structural design, quantity surveying, construction project management, and sustainability with very limited peer-reviewed studies on construction logistics management. The aim of this study is to investigate how BIM can be applied to construction logistics management. This study adopts a desk-top approach, with articles sources from renowned scientific databases such as ScienceDirect, Google Scholar and Emerald. The study culminated in the identification of benefits and barriers of adopting BIM for construction logistics management. Given only a desk-top approach has been used, the recommendation for future study is to build on this to conduct an empirical study using both qualitative and quantitative data. This will provide an in-depth understanding of the use of BIM for construction logistics management and open opportunities for further research

A systematic review of the application of multi-criteria decision-making in evaluating nationally determined contribution projects

Analyses in the past decade and more recently, catastrophic events, including extreme temperatures, un- predictable weather patterns, floods, and wildfires caused by climate change, have become too common worldwide. There is overwhelming evidence that country commitments expressed in National Determined Contributions (NDCs) can contribute to stabilising or reversing the course of impacts of climate change. With the multiplicity of NDC measures, compounded by their complexities and limited resources, multi-criteria decision-making tools can be used in making informed decisions about their development. Furthermore, while many countries are blessed with an abundance of sustainable resources and technologies to feed into NDCs, a major challenge is prioritising them as part of the national and global climate change mitigation and adaptation agenda. Many multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods and tools have been developed over the years. However, their implementation in practice for prioritising NDC measures is still not well-known despite their high acceptance in academic literature. This study adopts a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature from the Web of Science and grey literature from the recently launched Technology Needs Assessment database to fully understand the MCDM tools used in evaluating NDC projects from academic versus practice perspectives. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method adopted, culminated in the identification of 464 peer-reviewed journal articles and 50 TNA reports used in the analysis. The results indicate amongst the many MCDM techniques in peer-reviewed literature, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is the most widely used in research, while simplified MCDM methods are the most used in practice

Structural sustainability appraisal in BIM

The provision of Application Programming Interface (API) in BIM-enable tools can contribute to facilitating BIM-related research. APIs are useful links for running plug-ins and external programmes but they are yet to be fully exploited in expanding the BIM scope. The modelling of n-Dimensional (nD) building performance measures can potentially benefit from BIM extension through API implementations. Sustainability is one such measure associated with buildings. For the structural engineer, recent design criteria have put great emphasis on the sustainability credentials as part of the traditional criteria of structural integrity, constructability and cost. This paper examines the utilization of API in BIM extension and presents a demonstration of an API application to embed sustainability issues into the appraisal process of structural conceptual design options in BIM. It concludes that API implementations are useful in expanding the BIM scope. Also, the approach including process modelling, algorithms and object-based instantiations demonstrated in the API implementation can be applicable to other nD building performance measures as may be relevant to the various professional platforms in the construction domain

A Study of the Potential of Cloud/Mobile BIM for the Management of Construction Projects

Successful management of construction projects in the Building Information Modelling (BIM) era of the 21st Century should include intelligent systems to support construction project teams in making informed decisions. Project teams are routinely faced with contractual obligations to deliver projects to meet key construction parameters such as cost, time, quality and more recently stringent sustainability requirements. These sorts of pressures are no longer new as widely acknowledged by experienced project managers, contract administrators and clients. The poor performance of one or more of the aforementioned parameters will undoubtedly compromise the entire project, thus leading to the dissatisfaction of clients. This paper explores the use of mobile/cloud BIM in facilitating the adoption of an integrated approach to project delivery through automated or semi-automated dynamic information sharing processes with the ultimate goal of improving construction performance. The adopted methodology involved the use of an online-administered questionnaire survey and in-depth interviews. The study identifies the adoption and uptake of cloud/mobile BIM technologies and the benefits and barriers

Retrofit and Carbon Reduction Cost Analysis of a Circa 1930 UK Dwelling

Reduction in energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with a low-energy retrofit of a hypothetical case-study semi-detached British house in compliance with UK Energy Saving Trust and the UK Code for Sustainable Homes (L.3) requirements are investigated using retrofit options and cost data from real-life projects. Retrofit capital cost is contrasted with energy cost savings. It is shown that retrofit cost can achieve acceptable payback so long as selection of low-carbon materials is reconciled with the homeowners’ budget because both have considerable cost implications