A Novel Building Information Modeling-based Method for Improving Cost and Energy Performance of the Building Envelope

Abstract

Building envelopes and regional conditions can significantly contribute to the cost and energy performance of the buildings. Structured methods that take into account the impacts of both the envelope materials and the regional conditions to find the most feasible envelope materials within a region, however, are still missing. This study responds to this need by proposing a novel method using the capabilities of Building Information Modeling (BIM). The proposed method is used for identifying costand energy-efficient building envelope materials within a region over the life cycle. First, commonly used envelope materials in a region are identified. Then, BIM is employed for simulating the energy performance and evaluating the life cycle cost of the materials. The method was implemented in Tehran, Iran. It was successfully utilized for improving the cost and energy performance of a nine-story residential building case. The achieved results indicated a potential energy performance enhancement of 31%, and the life cycle cost improvement of 28% by replacing conventionally used envelope materials with the available high-performance building materials. The proposed method can benefit various stakeholders in the building construction industry, including municipalities, owners, contractors, and consumers, by enhancing the cost and energy performance of the buildings.

Passive Strategies for Building Retrofitting: Performances Analysis and Incentive Policies for the Iranian Scenario

“…The CC PC has been calculated on the basis of the Iranian market reference for the proposed interventions [7,75,76]. In addition, because of the lack of a standardized and detailed price list for construction materials, the authors evaluated and actualized the prices by comparing the references [7,75,76] with the current Iranian market in IRR, then converted to USD considering an IRR/USD exchange rate of ~1/0.000024 [77].…”

“…The CC PC has been calculated on the basis of the Iranian market reference for the proposed interventions [7,75,76]. In addition, because of the lack of a standardized and detailed price list for construction materials, the authors evaluated and actualized the prices by comparing the references [7,75,76] with the current Iranian market in IRR, then converted to USD considering an IRR/USD exchange rate of ~1/0.000024 [77]. Therefore, in this work, the cost of the whole SS facade system, including the renovation materials (for the insulation panels, metal structure for the ventilated facade, and tensile material), and the cost for the scaffolding and the cost of labor, has been assumed equal to 21.78 $/m 2 .…”

A Review on Life Cycle Cost Analysis of Buildings Based on Building Information Modeling

“…First and foremost, the BIM approach provides valuable and modern support for the LCC calculation (Khodabakhshian & Toosi, 2021;Lee et al, 2020), which is beneficial for reducing labor and time expense (Zhang et al, 2020;Cheng et al, 2022). Secondly, design errors can be checked through BIM modeling, thereby reducing unnecessary costs (Zhuang et al, 2021;Kharazi et al, 2020;Fazeli et al, 2019). Thirdly, the BIM model can quickly update the LCC results of buildings when design changes occur (Pučko et al, 2020).…”

“…In the 45 articles in the Appendix, most studies did not mention the precision of BIM. Nevertheless, LOD 300, a material-level accuracy, is still the most popular (Khodabakhshian & Toosi, 2021;Kharazi et al, 2020;Le et al, 2020). For component-level accuracy, Lee et al (2020) proposed a method to preliminarily estimate LCC in the early design phase using LOD 100-200.…”

“…LCC is not the only indicator for economic sustainability assessment but also affordability, manageability, and adaptability (Ahmad & Thaheem, 2018). When it comes to environmental assessment, some studies consider the trade-off between LCC and signal environmental impact, such as life cycle carbon emissions (LCCE) (Liu et al, 2015;Shin & Cho, 2015;Kim & Park, 2018) or life cycle energy (LCE) (Sandberg et al, 2019;Pučko et al, 2020;Kharazi et al, 2020). Furthermore, other studies cover multiple environmental impact indicators, including eutrophication potential (EP), acidification potential (AP), Smog Formation Potential (SFP), abiotic depletion potential of materials (ADPM), ozone depletion potential (ODP), photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) and so on (Ansah et al, 2020;Yung & Wang, 2014;Phillips et al, 2020;Santos et al, 2019Santos et al, , 2020aSantos et al, , 2020bMarzouk & Abdelakder, 2020).…”