Project Aim:

The aim of this project is to develop strategies for cost and time efficient BIM-supported design and planning process for sustainable buildings. Together with software developers and vendors the best practices in BIM-supported planning practice will be analysed and optimized.

The customized planning strategies for implementation of specific BIM-tools in life-cycle oriented, interdisciplinary process will be developed as the final result.

Method

Through an exploratory research – a laboratory experiment with the students of architecture and civil engineering, a design process for a sustainable building with complex geometry will be simulated. Within this process an architectural design, followed by structural desing and finally thermal and energetic optimisation will be carried out.

The experiment design foresees two treatments: the interdisciplinary teams (architect, engineer, energy consultant) will be split into two groups. One group will be working with open-BIM-methodology; the other with the one-plattform-BIM methods. Through comparative study the productivity, operability and usability will be tested and evaluated.

Further aspects of research will be communication intensity and efficiency, arising from interdisciplinary collaboration.  In this way the quantitative as well as qualitative aspects of BIM-supported design process can be evaluated and optimised.