A building information model (BIM) provides a rich representation of a building’s design. However, there are many challenges in receiving construction-specific information from a BIM, limiting the usability of BIMs for construction and other downstream processes. This paper describes a novel approach that utilizes ontology-based feature modeling, automatic feature extraction based on a well-established AEC XML standard schema, and query processing to extract information relevant to construction practitioners from a given BIM. The feature ontology generically represents construction-specific information that is useful for a broad range of construction management functions. The software prototype uses the ontology to transform the designer-focused BIM into a construction-specific feature-based model (FBM). The formal query methods operate on the FBM to further help construction users to quickly extract the necessary information from a BIM. The tests demonstrate that this approach provides a richer r...

Building information modeling (BIM) has been presented as a potential solution to current facilities management problems related to information exchange during handover, and facilities information management during operations. However, implementing BIM in an owner organization is a complex challenge that necessitates reconfiguration of work practices and internal structures to fully realize the benefits. Owners are often unsure about how or whether they should go through the challenges related to implementation. Although previous studies have documented the potential benefits of BIM adoption for owners, such as improvements in work order processing, very little research has specifically looked at the transition to BIM and the scale of the effort required for large and diverse owner organizations. This paper presents the results of a long-term embedded case study analysis of a large owner-operator institutional organization that investigated the alignment of facility management (FM) practices across organizational and project contexts. The research objective was to examine current organizational practices in order to understand the potential, as well as the challenges, of transitioning from a paper-based to a model-based approach in handover and operations. We describe the current state of handover, information management and facility management practices and developed a framework to characterize the alignment between organizational constructs, available technology, project artifacts and owner requirements. This investigation of the current state of practice enables us to understand the gap between available and required information, processes and technology, and to better understand the enormous challenges owners face when considering the transition to BIM.

To achieve energy-efficient design in urban communities, the design phase needs to adopt reliable energy modeling approaches. However, current urban modeling approaches often use abstract and low level information to describe buildings because of the difficulties of collecting and managing building data on the large scale required of such urban communities. This abstraction of building data creates large uncertainties in the modeling and simulation of energy scenarios at the community level. An important part of the solution to this challenge relies on the integration of information systems at the scale of both urban communities and individual buildings, which are based on geographic information system (GIS) and building information modeling (BIM) respectively. Since current technologies do not sufficiently address the interoperability between GIS and BIM, the existing conversion between GIS and BIM does not satisfy the data requirements for community energy design. This paper investigates this challenge and presents an approach that uses semantic web technologies, including web ontology language (OWL) and resource description framework (RDF), to integrate GIS and BIM data. In this approach, we use an extract, transform and load (ETL) tool to convert GIS and BIM data to RDF and conduct queries on the integrated RDF to provide the required information for energy simulation. The approach is tested through a case study of the University of British Columbia campus.

The design and construction community has shown increasing interest in adopting Building Information Models (BIM). While the richness of design information offered by BIM is evident, there are still tremendous challenges in getting construction-specific information out of BIM, particularly from IFC-based product models. This paper describes our approach for querying construction-specific design conditions from an IFC-based model. The approach involves: (1) the formalization of construction-specific design conditions as an ontology of product features, (2) the automated generation of feature-based product models for a particular construction domain and function, and (3) a formal specification that supports user-driven queries of the feature-based model. This approach allows practitioners to answer a broad range of user-customizable queries in support of different construction management functions. It also transforms designer-focused EFC-based models into construction-focused, feature-based models.