BIM based project management in construction

Purpose of this paper. INNOVance research project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development, wants to push a radical innovation into the Italian construction sector by creating a construction database, containing information about products, works, spaces, etc., along the whole constructions service life. This research also wants to reach a higher efficiency in using and maintaining objects information; this is achieved by linking continually updated extensible life-cycle objects data to independent software by using Building Information Models. Design/methodology/approach. Three are the main steps of the work done: a) to give an unambiguous name to everything in the construction process, from construction products to spaces, from operations to buildings; b) to define structure and content of information related to each named entity; c) to pair each entity to a BIM object. The first thing INNOVance aimed to was to create a coding system based on a standardised and unequivocal name that, in combination with standardised datasheets, guarantees the unambiguousness of each object of the construction. Findings and value. To manage and use information through the construction process, technical sheets have been defined and standardised among homogeneous objects categories to allow users performing comparisons and retrieving information easily and quickly. Information will be freely accessible through a web-based portal, currently under development, that relies on the INNOVance database. Research limitations/implications. INNOVance research is a big project, made to ease the work of many professionals and clients, but it needs a period of time to be fully comprehended by users and to have the database working, full of information. Despite the interval to be fully working, benefits are concrete and instantly tangible: having standardised information, always updated and usable in real projects, helps to avoid overcosts, delays, errors during construction and lack of performances. Practical implications. Most of the construction companies work in a way no more sufficient to guarantee good results in terms of quality, performances and costs. The database is born appositely with the idea of allowing all the companies, from the bigger to the smaller, to ???speak the same language???, avoiding problems, mainly due to documents and drawings not correctly interpreted and updated. Another important issue is the approach to public works, which are conducted mainly by big companies here in Italy; with this standardisation process also other companies can be inserted in this circuit, increasing their work. Originality/value of paper. This project is born by following the international trend (many countries are adopting systems similar to this). Actually in Italy there is no system like the one depicted in this paper so, the necessity to continue with the research is going forward together with the Italian construction sector.