BRE EP106 PDF

Preface

The built environment is increasingly embracing digital technologies, including control and automation systems, and as such is paving the way to smarter ways of managing our buildings and wider infrastructures. BIM has the opportunity to provide a key and distinct value proposition to this landscape, if it evolves to meet the requirements of modern systems which tend to be internet-based and embed a level of smartness through a learning capability. Specifically, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) fields are offering increasingly mature products and services in various application domains; the knowledge of built assets captured through BIM processes and models can offer invaluable context to these technologies to address current and future challenges, including the pressing climate change agenda. However, the legacy formats and lack of authoritative exemplary work in this space of ‘future BIM’ has hindered progress. Conversely, current ongoing BIM efforts in the UK, fuelled by a strong drive from Government, have raised a number of questions and uncertainties as to the future of BIM as reflected by the proposed UK BIM roadmap and its structuring into three debatable, and in academic terms, confusing levels.

This book discusses the future development of BIM from its current focus of improving knowledge creation and management in a project-based manner up to the operational stage, through to a mature whole lifecycle value proposition within assets and across their surrounding systems at the ‘block of buildings’, district and wider city scales. The book begins by introducing BIM and the broader evolving technological landscape, progressing to the evolution of the BIM paradigm and technologies, from a smart construction basis to a smart built environment basis. This pathway is evidenced by several collaborative research projects, and is concluded by a short discussion of recommendations for the future of this field.