Holistic views of all environmental impacts for buildings such as Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) are rarely performed. Building services are mostly included in this assessment only in a simplified way, which means that their embodied impacts are usually underestimated. Open Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) provide for significantly more efficient and comprehensive LCA performance. This study investigated how building services can be included in an open BIM-integrated whole-building LCA for the first time, identified challenges and showed six solution approaches. Based on the definition of 222 exchange requirements and their mapping with IFC, an example BIM model was modeled before the linking of 7312 BIM objects of building services with LCA data that were analyzed in an LCA tool. The results show that 94.5% of the BIM objects could only be linked by applying one of the six solution approaches. The main problems were due to: (1) modeling by a lack of standardization of attributes of BIM objects; (2) difficult machine readability of the building services LCA datasets as well as a general lack of these; and (3) non-standardized properties of building services and LCA specific dataset information in the IFC data format.
Digitalization is accelerating and changing much in our lifestyles and ways of working. In the construction and building sector, this phenomenon is currently gaining acceptance through the Building Information Modeling (BIM) method. As an integral planning method for improving the quality of planning, construction and operating processes, BIM requires a starting point that is defined by demand planning. This paper focuses on recording demand planning digitally and generating it autonomously for basic planning. The aim is to provide planners with a BIM model that is generated early from user-oriented needs with in-depth information and enables considering sustainable and health planning aspects in the future. As a result, BIM and the open BIM data exchange format Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are used to create a BIM-Model (3D Model) based on user needs, which are recorded by a web application. Thereby planners will be provided with a valuable starting and orientation basis that considers important user requirements. In doing so, maximum user satisfaction and quality will be achieved. Furthermore, communication and participation of users in the planning process will be promoted.
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