1.3 Learning objectives
This paper will learn:
- What a BIM tool can do for a Facility manager;
- How a BIM tool can help the facility manager to plan into the future;
- How the future BIM software will look like;
- How the future BIM software should look like according to the FM demands.
1.4 Approach
The following steps were taken while writing this paper:
- It started with finding a topic, for that we did a desk research and made a list of topics we both liked.
- We defined the subject.
- We set the boundaries with defining chapter 1 together.
- After the boundaries were set we made a table of contents.
- The work was divided equally and information found with desk and book research.
Chapter 2: Analysis
This chapter the current state of the BIM software and its impact on the work of the Facility manager will be analyzed. The structure of analysis is based on the life cycle model; Concept, planning, construction, usage, re-use and demolishing. In the second half of this chapter the future of BIM will be discussed, how will it look like and how should it look like in the future?
2.1 Now
To investigate the current situation on BIM tools for Facility Managers we will describe the field of work by a life cycle model of a building. Therefor we created a model based on the schema of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA). It will show the phases of a life cycle in which a Facility Manager could be involved. For a complete overview of the matter we will assume that the Facility Manager will be involved in all phases of the project development.
For the analysis of the now we used the Life Cycle Model because it shows the complete life time of a building (from beginning till the demolishing) and the Facility Manager is normally in charge of the building. As read before normally the Facility Manager comes in when the owners/users use the building but we believe that the Facility Manager should have influence during the whole life cycle of the building, the Facility Manager knows what his/her company wants, what their demands are.
The BIM model is a tool that is meant for the entire life cycle of the building.
Picture 2: Life Cycle Model
2.1.1 Concept/idea
Even though the actual design is done by architects, the facility manager will be part of the concept creating team, especially if he is in the role of a project developer. BIM software can help him in any case to see early drafts of the building from various perspectives and allows him to intervene when he notices design flaws that would make a reasonable use impossible. BIM software also gives the facility manager a handy tool to present visual results of the conception phase to the customer/investor before even going too deep into details.
Most importantly BIM programs can help the planners to implement the schedule of requirements into the design phase. A schedule of requirements is a word document with all the requirements/demands of the consumer.
Content of a schedule of requirements are in general:
- The conditions for usability
- Budget
- Time
- Location.
It contains information about the future user or target group like the number of employees, percentage of full and part time employees and other basic data like company structure. Functional demands can be special workflows that need to be enabled, goods that will be handled and means of communication that need to be available. BIM can also provide support for the calculation of space demands, like storage space, average size of an office or the number of parking lots. Technical demands that needs to be fulfilled could be certain load capacities for floors, maximum energy consumption or company policies on energy saving and easily maintainable technical equipment.
The pictures above show the work relation chart and the spot plan. The work relation chart shows witch departments work together a lot and which ones don’t need any information/communication from each other. When this relation chart is made together with m2 per employee a spot plan can be made. A spot plan gives a rough overview where every department should come, keeping in mind the relation with other department and his size.
The schedule of requirements is a powerful tool. It is a communication device and can be piece of a contract. It is also base for the investment/profit calculation and a constant test instrument for the design. Meaning that in any stage of the planning process you can check the design to see if the demands are being met.
BIM software can, even in that early phase and based on experience from former projects, give first information about the costs. Can the customer afford what he wants?
2.1.2 Planning & Construction
These 2 phases will be combined in this paper because the Facility Manager will only check the products based on the schedule of requirements as shown in the model below.
Picture 5: The position of the schedule of requirements in the building process
This model is made by us self and based on school courses we had in the past. The model shows that the user gives an assignment to the designers to design a building based on the demands (schedule of requirements) of the user. The design will be checked again with the demands of the users, when this is correct the design will be given to the builder, who builds the building. The building will be checked with the design and the demands of the user. When the building passed the check the user can use the building.
The Facility Manager does not have an active role during these two phases but the schedule of requirements which he made in the previous phase is an important key factor during the design and building phase.
2.1.3 Usage
During the usage phase of the building the Facility Manager can use the BIM software to plan, manage and track projects. The Facility Management module is in most software programs integrated, like Bentley and Autodesk, to ensure that data in the Facilities Database is securely connected to the engineering drawings and other documents that are consistently managed and maintained in the software environment. Web-based reporting capabilities allow a wide range of recipients in the organization to access or create facilities reports for their needs.
With the following aspects in the daily work life he can use BIM:
- Space Management
BIM software allows the facility manager to manage the available space very efficiently. Facility drawings are an important component of facilities planning and management, and Facility Manager allows two different types of drawings to be used: space plans and plan views. A space plan is object-based, comprising of the drawing geometry linked to the associated data of spaces and/or equipment objects in the FMDesktop database. It is the main feature that integrates facility drawings with the facility data. A plan view, on the other hand, is a static layout that only contains drawing geometry without any associated information about the drawing. Once the facility drawings are imported and integrated with the associated data, Facility Manager can be used to carry out the wide array of management tasks.
Picture 6: Space Management Module of Bentley BIM
Once a file (e.g. DWF) is imported it can be associated with the individual spaces in a database such as space number and description. The area of each space is also calculated (see picture 6) and displayed. The facility manager can now go ahead and add additional information about each space such as occupant information, capacity, type, equipment, and so on.
- Environment Management
With the native heating and cooling load-analysis capability in BIM, one simply defines analysis parameters for rooms in the building model and click on the Heating & Cooling loads tool. A visual representation of the analysis model is presented, along with additional analysis inputs that can be used to refine the data that's automatically assigned to the building and rooms for the analysis. Data such as occupancy, internal loads, room type and construction and even building location that are defined in the BIM model can be adjusted and overridden for the analysis if desired.
Picture 7: Air-flow and load calculation report
- Energy Management
This analysis package allows architects to receive quick feedback on their design; feedback such as how much energy the building will use, what are the anticipated CO2 emissions and if the building will pass day lighting requirements.
Facility Managers can use this module to visualize the current energy consumption and CO2 emissions with a dashboard interface. The automatically generated reports show the energy consumption per room, room function or floor this allows the Facility Manager to track down the biggest energy users.
- Maintenance
The BIM maintenance module shows all the maintenance that has been done in the past and gives automatically a warning sign when maintenance needs to been done on product or building. The BIM software can also automatically assign workers (intern and extern) the maintenance tasks. The module can contain an overview of the spare parts in stock. As well as a library where part numbers of technical equipment can be found in case they need to be ordered. The module also keeps track of the time of a replacement of critical components and the tools that are required to change them.
- Emergency Management
This module gives a graphical overview of the escape routes in the building and insures that these are properly illuminated and signposted. It contains the location of the fire extinguisher/smoke detectors and other firefighting equipment plus their checkup dates.
The smoke detectors, if connected to building network, can be tested remotely through the BIM.
- Move Management
For successful Change Management and restructuring of departments the vital information is what kind of furniture is available, where is it, what is the condition and does it fit in the new space. For that the BIM provides an inventory module that shows this kind of information. With a RFID chip on the furniture the BIM can also locate the position of the specific furniture. In case a wall needs to be moved to enlarge the room there is a map of the infrastructure grid available.
Picture 8: 3D overview of furniture with a RFID chip
2.1.4 Re-use
As seen in picture 2 the life cycle of the building starts all over again. This time the idea/concept and design phase is based on an already existing building. BIM helps to overcome the resulting limitations and makes planning due to the existing plans a lot easier.
Architects and Facility Manager got the possibility to see how the changes can be realized with the least effort because the BIM allows them to see where the infrastructure such as cables and pipes is hidden behind walls. It also enables them to go through various designs and the BIM shows them which walls can be removed without interfering with the buildings statics.
Picture 9: Plan with already existing pipelines
2.1.5 Demolishing
When the end of a buildings lifecycle is reached due to economic reasons or drastic changes in the usage of the plot it comes to the demolishing. Also this phase can be highly cost intense and needs to be supported by BIM. Most importantly BIM offers a list of potentially hazardous building materials that have been used and where they have been installed.
2.2 Future
Ten years ago, Doug Glasgow used an early version of building information modeling (BIM) as part of a team designing a lab facility at The University of North Carolina. Now BIM technology, used by architects and contractors to create 3-D building models and construction databases, is certainly more advanced and widely used. In this paragraph we will give an impression of how BIM could look like on its 20th birthday. The first sub-paragraph will describe the possible new features and in the second paragraph there will be Facility Management based features that it should get during the next years…
2.2.1 BIM features in the future
All the features described in the pages before are already existing but rare! There is hardly any company who works with them all due to the cost factor and the novelty of BIM. Our expectation for the future is that the already existing features get more acknowledged under the possible workers (architects, facility Manager etc.), that the price of BIM software will decrease and that more and more companies will work with BIM. We expect that then the already existing features will evolve but also new features will be created to help the engineers and architects to deliver better quality in less time and build up a large database full of information for all the users of the building.
Features that might be developed in the next 5-10 years are:
- Life cycle Management, an estimation of the life cycle costs in the design phase.
- Emergency Management simulation, a model of how people would escape from a building in case of an emergency or how a fire will develop.
- Demolition Management simulation and calculation, considering an easy demolition during the design phase.
- Usability Management, how accessible is the building for people with a handicap.
- What if simulations (earthquake, environmental, economic), what will happen with the building when an earthquake with for example 5.3 occurs.
2.2.2 How should BIM look like according to the FM demands?
From the perspective of the Facility Manager it would be the best solution if CAFM (Computer Aided Facility Management) would be integrated in BIM. Almost all the Facility Managers work with CAFM since it has more functions then BIM has at the moment but it´s not impossible for BIM to gain/process these functions.
In the box on the left are all the functions of CAFM. The features in green are the functions they both have in common. The orange colored functions are the functions only CAFM has at the moment but could be adapted by BIM.
It´s better to merge all the functions into BIM because BIM has a large integral data warehouse function for all the information build up from the beginning of the Life Cycle of the building. Therefore CAFM would be a useful feature of BIM.
Chapter 3: Results and Business Impacts
3.1 Key Findings
The usage of BIM is not widely spread among Facility Managers at the moment, which is due to the fact, that the software is mostly designed for engineers, architects and contractors. Nevertheless Facility Managers can certainly use BIM to monitor the Life Cycle of a building even thought it might not be one hundred percent adapted for their daily business
If the features of BIM and CAFM would be merged in a single program they would form a powerful alliance that would give the FM a powerful tool at hand to perform his duties more efficiently.
3.2 Business Impacts
A craftsman is only as good as his tools. The same is valid for the facility manager and his software. With a properly adapted BIM platform a building can be planned, build and managed more cost efficient, safely and less resource consuming. This will benefit all partied involved in the project and help to make the long life of a building more predictable.
3.3 Conclusion
In this paper we asked the question how Facility Managers can use BIM to help them develop into the future. To give an answer to this question we first analysis the usability of BIM for Facility Managers. We found out that the BIM can definitely help the Facility Manager to plan projects/maintenance orientated. The focus here should lay on the complete Life Cycle of the building which due to the extended time of usage has to dare a look into the future.
We found out that this is possible but depends on future evolution of the BIM. We recommend to merge the main features of CAFM with BIM. This is necessary to avoid working with different software programs and BIM´s intent is to make the BIM database and process a long term “living tool.” That means it is ideally available and kept current with input from multiple people from the earliest design concept, through full documentation, into construction, during the building operation and ultimately used to “de-construct” or demolish the building.
The beneficiaries of the above definition can be a large group of people over the life of the building. This group could include owners, planners, realtors, appraisers, mortgage bankers, designers, engineers, estimators, specification writers, safety inspectors, occupational health specialists, environmentalists, contractors, lawyers, contract officers, sub-contractors, fabricators, code officials, operators, facilities managers, maintenance personnel, risk managers, renovators, first responders, demolition/deconstruction contractors and perhaps even others. Each of these people has their own view or use for the information in a BIM model. Some contribute information to the model, some simply read and use information from it, while some may do both.
3.4 Practical tips and Key Lessons
- BIM can be used during the whole Life Cycle of a building
- The main costs occur during the use of a building not during planning/construction
- Facility Managers can/should use BIM
- Facility Managers should have influence during the whole Life Cycle of the building
- BIM needs some more adaptation for Facility Managers
- BIM and CAFM got redundant features
References
Internet:
Books:
- Eastman, Ch., Teicholz, P., Sacks, R., Liston, K. (2008) BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN: 0470185287
- Hardin, B. (2009), BIM and Construction Management: Proven Tools, Methods, and Workflows, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN: 0470402350
- Kymmell, W. (2008), Building Information Modeling: Planning and Managing Construction Projects with 4D CAD and Simulations, Mcgraw-Hill Professional, ISBN: 0071494537
See picture 1 for all the aspects of the Facility Manager
