Leveraging BIM for digital built environment asset management

A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study shows that all stakeholders in the capital facilities industry waste a huge amount of money looking for, validating, and/or recreating facility information that should be readily available. The total cost of these activities within the capital facilities industries in the United States was conservatively estimated at $15.8 billion in 2002, with two-thirds of that cost occurring during the facilities' operations and maintenance phase. Nowadays standards and specifications have been developed about availability, integrity and transfer of data and information during the operational phase of an asset life. PAS 1192-3, among these, suggests the use of BIM (Building Information Modeling) models to store and access facility information, but the turning point is the ability to provide different stakeholders with different data, which should be targeted to them, easily accessible, readable and updatable (and up to date). This research started with the collection of asset managers' needs and then the definition of new procedures for assets and facility management in a BIM based workflow focusing on how to allow users to access, use and update facility data stored in a BIM model without a BIM authoring tool. Examples are shown for: (1) management of rooms occupancy; (2) management of mechanical equipment status; (3) qualitative condition assessment of buildings; and (4) appraisal of the service life of building components and systems according to ISO 15686-8. These four tools allow to compute and control some key indicators of the asset, with also the possibility to compare them inside a portfolio. This paper presents the four tools, paying also attention to the workflows to be followed and to the different data needs of the stakeholders involved.