BI M for Sustainable Design:Results of an Industry Survey

Recently , growing environmental concerns and rising energy costs have tremendously
increased the demand of sustainable buildings. More and more, both public and private organizations are requiring architects, engineers and constructors to design and build with minimal environmental impact (Azhar and Brown, 2009).
The most effective decisions related to the sustainable design of a facility can be made in the early design and preconstruction stages. Traditional CAD planning environments typically do not have the capability of performing such analyses in early stages of design development. Building performance analyses are typically performed after the architectural design and construction documents have been produced. This lack of continuous analysis leads to an inefficient process of retroactively modifying the design to achieve a set of performance criteria (Schueter and Thessling, 2008).

To assess building performance in the early design and preconstruction phases, access to a comprehensive set of data regarding a building’s form, materials, context and technical systems are required. Because building information modeling (BIM) allows for multi-disciplinary information to be superimposed within one
model, it creates an opportunity for sustainability measures to be incorporated in the design process (Autodesk, 2008).

Research objectives and design

In order to evaluate the state-of-the-art and benefits of BIM-based sustainability analyses and design, a questionnaire survey was conducted. The target audience consisted of design and construction firms who use BIM technology and/or sustainable design/construction practices in most of their projects. These firms were identified through a published list of the top 100 green contractors as of 2009, members of the AGC BIMForum, members of the buildingSMART alliance™, and direct contacts made within the architecture and construction industries.
The questionnaire was launched on October 12, 2009, and closed on January 8, 2010. Of the 145 respondents, the majority worked for architecture (44 percent) and construction companies (34 percent), followed by design/build firms (16 percent) and BIM consultants (6 percent). It is important to note that the survey population was not selected using any statistical methods and hence the results should not be considered as statistically significant.
The questionnaire was designed based on a skip-logic method, in which the selection of the next question is based on the answer of the previous question. The skip-logic method prevents respondents from answering questions which they are not qualified to answer. The questionnaire
had two skip-logic questions. The first skip-logic question identified the survey respondents currently using BIM. Of the 145 respondents, 131 (90 percent) were using BIM technology in their projects; while 14 respondents (10 percent) were non-BIM users. No further questions were asked from the later group and the rest of the respondents were directed to the second skip-logic question which identified the respondents currently employing BIM-based sustainability analyses/design measures in their projects. Of these 131
respondents, 87 (66 percent) were using BIM-based sustainability practices; while 44 (34 percent) were not using BIM for this purpose.

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