Intelligent Facilities: Applicability and Flexibility of Open BIM Standards for Operations and Maintenance

Abstract

Until now, the process of obtaining spatial information for facilities management (FM) has been laborious and tedious, even with the use of computer-aided facility management tools. The proposed research utilizes BIM-based workflow to capture object attributes such that the building data created in a BIM model may be brought seamlessly into a facilities management system rather than recreated. The proposed system not only imports geometry of walls, doors, windows, columns, and so on, but also retrieves attribute data associated with these objects. Therefore, queries can be executed to obtain needed information, generate graphic or data-based reports, and identify interesting trends in facilities operations and maintenance for appropriate management. Because the proposed approach is object-based, the system will calculate automatically or display the area of each space, and add additional information about each space, such as occupant information, capacity, type, equipment, and so on. Open BIM standards are used to retrieve or store information in a BIM model as that will facilitate the exchange of information among different FM systems. A prototype of the proposed system was developed in collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC) FM department. The prototype was tested for its applicability and flexibility for the UNCC FM operations and maintenance management.