An interoperable ICT tool for asset and maintenance management -Advances in research –

Asset and maintenance management needs to store and use much information about the behaviour over time of different building materials, products and components. Service life planning and data capitalization from facility management are only the first steps for an efficient asset management because it is necessary to develop specific ICT tools for life cycle data use and sharing. Managing information related with actual maintenance works and inspection activity (condition assessment) allow handling Building Information Systems and this is fundamental in order to fit the reliability and service life evaluations for maintenance planning. For this reason, an ongoing research activity is developing some methods and tools for Service Life Planning and Management, which can be easily integrated by maintenance data to be used during planning, design, facility and maintenance activities. The aim is to develop an interoperable Life Cycle Management System (LCMS) platform where this kind of data are available and where different stakeholders can store and share information about building and constructed assets. The interoperable LCMS platform can be then used on actual maintenance works management to demonstrate the benefit as for economic (Life Cycle Costs) and environmental achievements (Life Cycle Assessment). This operation has been done according to the international standard for service life planning of building and constructed asset procedures ISO 15686, in particular in conformity with the fifth part on Life-cycle Costing, which allows a cost analysis of the entire building life cycle (maintenance included). Eventually, this ICT-tool is being developed using the standard IFC (Industrial Foundation Classes) of IAI (International Alliance for Interoperability) to define Building Information Models (BIM). In particular, interoperability will be guarantee by sharing file .ifcxml and therefore using eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML). Service life data, maintenance information, costs and each parameter for sustainability have in fact to be matched with Building Information Models attributes, upgrading BIM objects themselves in case of lack of some attributes. This database will be accessible online from a web platform, which is thought to become an interactive footbridge among different stakeholders. As the quantity of collected information will be huge, there are different views of the database according to the stakeholder profile: the aim is to facilitate its use, filtering only useful data for the considered stakeholder, but leaving the possibility to search, visualize and, possibly, modify any other information of the database. Hereafter the advances in research to structure this database and to enhance existing methods and tools for Life Cycle management are described.