Abstract. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has had a profound effect on the construction industry. It has greatly improved coordination among stakeholders, enhanced productivity, and increased profits. However, many factors still limit the application of BIM in the construction industry. This study conducts a literature review to identify these negative factors. Firstly, twenty-two sub-factors are identified and classified into five categories: Technology, Cost, Management, Personnel, and Legal. Secondly, some suggestions for eliminating these limiting factors are given. Finally, the study also identifies further research directions for improving BIM theory and applying BIM technology widely and successfully. The results of this study will provide support for practitioners who are using or plan to use BIM.

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Abstract:Timber building has gained more and more attention worldwide due to it being a generic renewable material and having low environmental impact. It is widely accepted that the use of timber may be able to reduce the embodied energy of a building. However, the development of timber buildings in China is not as rapid as in some other countries. This may be because of the limitations of building regulations and technological development. Several new policies have been or are being implemented in China in order to encourage the use of timber in building construction and this could lead to a revolutionary change in the building industry in China. This paper is the first one to examine the feasibility of using Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) as an alternative solution to concrete by means of a cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment in China. A seven-storey reference concrete building in Xi'an was selected as a case study in comparison with a redesigned CLT building. Two cities in China, in cold and severe cold regions (Xi'an and Harbin), were selected for this research. The assessment includes three different stages of the life span of a building: materialisation, operation, and end-of-life. The inventory data used in the materialisation stage was mostly local, in order to ensure that the assessment appropriately reflects the situation in China. Energy consumption in the operation stage was obtained from simulation by commercialised software IES TM , and different scenarios for recycling of timber material in the end-of-life are discussed in this paper. The results from this paper show that using CLT to replace conventional carbon intensive material would reduce energy consumption by more than 30% and reduce CO 2 emission by more than 40% in both cities. This paper supports, and has shown the potential of, CLT being used in cold regions with proper detailing to minimise environmental impact.

This paper aims to investigate the energy saving and carbon reduction performance of cross-laminated timber residential buildings in the severe cold region of China through a computational simulation approach. The authors selected Harbin as the simulation environment, designed reference residential buildings with different storeys which were constructed using reinforced concrete (RC) and cross-laminated timber (CLT) systems, then simulated the energy performance using the commercial software IES TM and finally made comparisions between the RC and CLT buildings. The results show that the estimated energy consumption and carbon emissions for CLT buildings are 9.9% and 13.2% lower than those of RC buildings in view of life-cycle assessment. This indicates that the CLT construction system has good potential for energy saving when compared to RC in the severe cold region of China. The energy efficiency of residential buildings is closely related to the height for both RC and CLT buildings. In spite of the higher cost of materials for high-rise buildings, both RC and CLT tall residential buildings have better energy efficiency than low-rise and mid-rise buildings in the severe cold region of China.

Abstract. Due to more complex structure and increasing prefabrication rate of precast concrete buildings, the assembly order between their constituent components is getting more and more attention. In order to solve the assembly sequence planning and optimization (ASPO) problem in precast concrete buildings, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Improved Genetic Algorithm (IGA) are organically combined to propose a new method called BIM-IGA-based ASPO method. This method uses BIM for parametric modelling, uses IGA to search for an optimal assembly sequence, and then uses BIM again for visual simulation to further test the assembly sequence. Besides, IGA, which is improved in coding mode, crossover operation and mutation operation, is also used to achieve the dynamic adjustment of assembly sequence in construction process. A full-text example is used to explain the detailed operating principle of BIM-IGA-based ASPO method. The results indicate that the method can effectively find an optimal assembly sequence to reduce the assembly difficulty of a precast concrete building.

Abstract:Critical mining under buildings, railways, and water bodies (BRW) brings the contradiction between high recovery rate and minor environmental hazards. To lessen this contradiction, an innovative mining method referred to as "wide strip backfill mining" (WSBM) was proposed in this study. A Winkler beam model is applied to the primary key strata (PKS), and the study revealed a surface subsidence control mechanism and designed the technical parameters of the method. The respective numerical simulations suggested the feasibility of the proposed method and the main influencing factors on surface subsidence can be ranked in descending order as wide filling strip width (WFSW), filling ratio, and pillar width. Meanwhile, a drop in the WFSW from 96 m to 72 m brought out the surface subsidence reduction by 44.5%. By using the super-high water content filling material, the proposed method was applied in the Taoyi coal mine under critical mining conditions. The resulting surface subsidence and deformations met the safety requirements for building protection level 1, and the recovery rate reached 75.9%. Moreover, the application of the method achieved significant technical and economic benefits. The research can provide a theoretical and experimental substantiation for critical mining under BRW.

This paper focused on energy consumption and carbon emission for heating and cooling during a building's operation stage, and examined the energy effects of using Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) as an alternative building material to reinforced concrete (RC) in China's 31 key cities located in different climate zones. The authors designed two seven-story residential buildings, which were constructed with RC framed and CLT systems, separately. This was followed by simulating the energy consumption using commercialized software IES TM under the different climate zones and calculating the carbon emissions. Comparisons were made between RC and CLT systems buildings on the basis of simulation data. The results show that the estimated energy consumption and carbon emission in CLT buildings are much lower than that of RC buildings in all studied cities, which indicates that CLT systems have good potential in reducing carbon emission and saving energy consumption compared to RC. The energy consumptions and carbon emissions in both concrete and CLT buildings are closely related to the climate zones. Buildings in Severe Cold and Cold Regions consumed the most energy and released more carbon. At the national level, the estimated energy consumption at the operation stage, in the studied building with RC frames and CLT system was approximately 465.1 MJ/m 2 and 332.6 MJ/m 2 per annum, respectively. Despite vast differences in China's climate zones, the effects of energy saving and carbon reduction potentials of CLT buildings show little relationship to the climate zone. CLT buildings may result in a weighted 29.4% energy saving, which equals 24.6% carbon reductions, compared with RC buildings at the operation stage at national level, although it may vary in different climate zones.