This paper provides a critical review of developments in the adaptability of buildings. Its purpose is to determine the current ‘state-of-the-art’, describe current thinking and trends in research and practice, and identify issues and gaps that further research can address. It provides a basis for a scientific and practical understanding of the interdependencies across different design criterion. The paper increases the awareness of architects, engineers, clients and users on the importance of adaptability and its role in lowering impacts over the lifecycle of buildings as part of the infrastructure system.\ud This paper draws mainly from the literature as its source of evidence. These were identified from established databases and search engines (e.g. Scopus, ISI Web of Knowledge and Google Scholar) using key words such as adaptability, adaptable, adaptation, and flexibility. Over 80 sources including books, journal papers, conference proceedings, research reports and doctoral theses covering the period 1990 to 2017 were reviewed and categorised. An inductive approach was used to critically review and categorise these publications and develop a framework for analysis.\ud The concept of adaptability includes many dimensions which can broadly fall into two categories: changes to buildings and user adaptations to buildings. However, previous research has mostly focused on the former, with many attempts to identify building attributes that facilitate adaptability, and some considerations for its assessment. Key areas that have not been adequately addressed and which require further research include: user/occupant adaptations, cost, benefits and implications of various adaptability measures, and the development of a standardised assessment methodology that could aid in decision making in the design stage of buildings.\ud The adaptability strategies considered in this review focused mainly on building components and systems, and did not include the contribution of intelligent and smart/biological systems. The coverage is further limited in scope due to the period considered (1990-2017) and the exclusion of terms such as “retrofit” and “refurbishment” from the review. However, the findings provide a solid basis for further research in the areas identified above. It identifies research issues and gaps in knowledge between the defined needs and current state-of-the-art on adaptive building for both research and practice.\ud This paper is a review of research into a highly topical subject, given the acknowledged need to adapt buildings over their lifecycle to environmental, economic or social changes. It provides further insights on the dimensions of adaptability and identifies areas for further research that will contribute to the development of robust tools for the assessment of building adaptability, which will enhance the decision-making process of building design and the development of a more sustainable built environment

Digitisation of the built environment is seen as a significant factor for innovation in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation sector. However, lack of data and information in as-built digital models considerably limits the potential of Building Information Modelling in Facility Management. Therefore, optimisation of data collection and management is needed, all the more so now that Industry 4.0 has widened the use of sensors into buildings and infrastructures. A literature review on the two main pillars of digitalisation in construction, Building Information Modelling and Internet of Things, is presented, along with a bibliographic analysis of two citations and abstracts databases focusing on the operations stage. The bibliographic research has been carried out using Web of Science and Scopus databases. The article is aimed at providing a detailed analysis of BIM–IoT integration for Facility Management (FM) process improvements. Issues, opportunities and areas where further research efforts are required are outlined. Finally, four key areas of further research development in FM management have been proposed, focusing on optimising data collection and management.

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A National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study shows that all stakeholders in the capital facilities industry waste a huge amount of money looking for, validating, and/or recreating facility information that should be readily available. The total cost of these activities within the capital facilities industries in the United States was conservatively estimated at $15.8 billion in 2002, with two-thirds of that cost occurring during the facilities' operations and maintenance phase. This is confirmed by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) Maintenance Survey in 2009, which states that the loss of information generates an added cost of 12.4% of total annual mean O&M costs. Nowadays, standards and specifications have been developed about availability, integrity, and transfer of data and information during the operational phase of an asset life. PAS 1192-3, among these, suggests the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) models to store and access facility information, but the turning point is the ability to provide different stakeholders with different data, which should be targeted to them, easily accessible, readable, and updatable (and up to date). This research started with the collection of asset managers' needs and then the definition of new procedures for assets and facility management in a BIM-based workflow focusing on how to allow users to access, use, and update facility data stored in a BIM model without a BIM authoring tool. Examples are shown for: (1) management of rooms occupancy; (2) management of mechanical equipment status; (3) qualitative condition assessment of buildings; and (4) appraisal of the service life of building components and systems according to ISO 15686-8. These four tools allow to compute and control some key indicators of the asset, with also the possibility to compare them inside a portfolio. This paper presents the four tools, paying also attention to the workflows to be followed and to the different data needs of the stakeholders involved.

School buildings in Italy are outdated, in critical maintenance conditions and they often perform below acceptable service levels and quality standards. Nevertheless, data supporting renovation policies are missing or very expensive to be obtained. The paper presents a methods for evaluating building's energy savings potential, using the Building Energy Certification (Certificazione Energetica degli Edifici-CENED) open database. The aim of the research concerns the development of a data-driven set of methods, based on the use of open data, machine learning (ML) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to support regional energy retrofit policies on school buildings. The main advantage concerns the possibility to predict the post-retrofit energy savings, avoiding the expensive on-site Condition Assessment (CA) phase. Data have been first clustered to identify the most common thermo-physical properties of the envelope, then three retrofit scenarios have been defined to allow the retrofit of homogeneous types of buildings. The energy saving potentials have been evaluated through the implementation of eight Artificial Neural Networks. Ultimately, data have been geolocated and further processed to support the definition of the energy retrofit policies for the most critical regional areas. The Lombardy region has been chosen as case study to test the robustness of the proposed methods. The results of the case study proved that school buildings energy retrofit policies can be defined and compared using available open data, ML and GIS. The future developments of the research concern the further integration of GIS for retrofit cost assessment and scenario analysis.

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