Open Collections

Investigating the transition to BIM-enabled facilities management : a large public owner's perspective

University of British Columbia

In the architecture, engineering, construction, owner, and operator (AECOO) industry, there is growing interest in the use of building information modeling (BIM) for facilities management (FM). BIM prevents facility information from being lost, eases the access to data, and automates data entry. Despite these advantages, however, the adoption of FM BIM is facing slow growth. To promote the use of FM BIM, we need to understand the challenges of transitioning to BIM for facility owners. The objective of this research is to investigate the process and effort of developing and utilizing FM BIM. The research is based on a case study of a large public owner organization in Canada. The Owner recently completed the construction of an institutional facility that utilized BIM in design and construction. A pilot study was conducted to inform the owner of the effort to develop the handover BIM for FM purposes. The research was conducted in three phases: (1) the pre pilot study revealed the limitations of current FM processes, (2) the pilot study investigated the process to develop a FM BIM, and (3) the post pilot study identified the organizational barriers to utilizing the FM BIM. The pre pilot study revealed the inefficiencies in the daily FM practice and FM information systems, which was due to the poor quality of handover documents, inaccuracy of facility data, and lack of interoperability among the systems. These inefficiencies motivated the owner to consider the opportunities that BIM could provide for efficient data management. The pilot study detailed the process of developing the FM BIM, which included numerous steps: analyzing handover model, obtaining data from handover documents, populating the model, and attaching the O&M files. A significant amount of effort was required due to the poor quality of handover model, unorganized handover documents, and the absence of parameter template. Beyond these challenges, there were barriers to the utilization of the FM BIM, including the absence of BIM experts, lack of training, and lack of proper hardware and software, which emphasized the need for support from high-level management.

Text

2017-04-20

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/61286

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/