Green BIM

Civil Engineering Consortium IIT Roorkee

6 min readAug 1, 2022

What is BIM?

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the holistic process of creating and managing information for a built asset. Based on an intelligent model enabled by a cloud platform, BIM integrates structured, multi-disciplinary data to produce a digital representation of an asset across its lifecycle, from planning and design to construction and operations.

Concept of Green BIM

Sustainable development principles entangle the environmental aspect concerning resource usage, the economic element involving the ability to support economical production, and the social part establishing systems to function at a social well-being level. Correspondingly, it defines building green as using resources such as energy, water, materials, and land rather than conventional buildings or buildings that are typically made to the latest codes more efficiently. While the green or sustainable building is characterized as a “high-performance building,” in which green strategies could minimize or mitigate environmental impact towards land use, building design, construction, and operation. Green building’s objective is to increase the efficiency of natural resource utilization concurrent with diminishing adverse environmental impacts.

Hence, the construction project team should be responsible for designing and constructing buildings that are energy efficient and use natural or reclaimed materials concerning the surroundings they endure. Integrating the BIM mechanism with the green or sustainable building could mean adapting an advanced technology with digital models as references to facilitate controlling environmental effects on building design, construction, and operation resulting from its immense activities, towards achieving more intelligent and efficient ways of practicing sustainability in the construction industry.

A green building has high requirements for its entire lifecycle, especially in the design phase. However, the traditional architectural design lacks systematic design methods and tools, and the currently prevailing design conventional design mode plus green building consultation have difficulty ensuring that the actual performance can be in accord with a green design. The Green BIM method provides a new idea for building green performance research and green campus construction.

In 2008, Eddy Krygiel and Bradley Nies introduced the concept of Green BIM, which they defined as “the process to generate and manage the full-lifecycle data information of building based on the building information model, improving the building performance and promoting and achieving the expected sustainable goal.” Their work emphasizes the importance of BIM technology in designing and constructing green buildings through its role in reforming design methods and its influence on the different stakeholders in the building industry. In their opinion, Green BIM is characterized by: acknowledging the importance of the impact of climate and regional environment, linking benchmarking and target setting, using BIM architecture for building performance analysis, and realizing performance optimization through scheme comparison and modification.

The Green BIM decision process has different design criteria and objectives. It requires the following steps first, to fully understand the local climate and environment of the construction site; second, to reduce energy demand and improve energy performance; third, to set evaluation benchmark values and project objectives; and finally, to select appropriate BIM software, establish a model in steps, and conduct targeted visual analysis. A variety of BIM software programs provide a data exchange function, input the data in the model into relevant analysis software via exchange formats, such as IFC and gbXML, and present the results of the calculation and analysis within a short time through such a decision cycle, the original scheme can be optimized and revised, thereby providing a guarantee for quick decision making on the green building design scheme.

Building Information modeling (BIM) is presently one of the prominent trends in the architecture, engineering, and construction sector. It is the graphical depiction of the building in the future and also incorporates the fundamental, physical and intrinsic aspects of a building. Currently, in India, the benefits of BIM are utilized only for the design and not carried forward to other segments like construction and facilities management. Also, those companies in India that are providing BIM services have priced it high and the clients are unaware that money can be saved by properly using these services. These obstacles are making BIM to be classified as an expensive technology to adopt.

BIM’s tool is specially made to support energy analysis the application to find the probable gain or loss of energy for the structure, to detect and to estimate its sustainability soon at the conceptual design phase itself. So, at the very beginning of the project delivery, the owner and the project team will be able to commence with sustainability assessment. BIM is a powerful application for sustainable design considering its ability to test, analyze, and improve your plan again and again. This is termed Building Performance Analysis (BPA). There is much energy analysis tools available presently in the industry like Ecotect, IES-VE, Green Building Studio (GBS), EnergyPlus, Equest etc., which can be used in combination with BIM software such as Revit, ArchiCAD, Bentley, Graphisoft, etc.

Implementation benefits

In response to global warming, the shortage of energy resources, and the challenges of environmental degradation, humans are trying to build low-carbon Eco-cities and popularize low-carbon green buildings. Building “green”- refers to the entire life cycle of the building, which includes maximizing the conservation of resources (energy, water, land, and materials), protecting the environment, reducing pollution, providing people with healthy, comfortable, and efficient use of space, and establishing the harmony of nature and architecture. BIM can be integrated into analog-energy buildings, airflow analysis, and buildings’ sunshine ecosystems in green and sustainable buildings. By using BIM, it is possible to reduce waste and improve construction quality. BIM builds a “visualization” of the digital building models through multi-dimensional digital design solutions, which provide the “simulation and analysis” of scientific collaboration platforms for designers, architects, utility engineers, developers, and even end users. Moreover, the BIM helps them to take advantage of three-dimensional digital models in the design and construction of projects and operational management.

BIM’s existence in the construction industry offers numerous benefits in improving team performance and productivity due to using coordinated digital models to reduce errors and reworks. The application of the technology subsequently establishes more effective communication and collaboration within the team. Additionally, more reliable decision-making would accomplish more successful project goals. With regards to merits gained in virtue of Green BIM implementation it can be observed through several aspects. Emphasizing the economic benefits of procuring green buildings could maximize cost savings, increase productivity, and escalate property values and marketability. The indirect benefits are improved image, risk reduction, future proofing, and self-reliance.

The challenges of Green BIM practices

Despite the advantages of Green BIM practices, some challenges demand solutions to envisage all-embracing sustainable construction. It suggests that the significant challenges involve conceptual and practical when inculcating green measuring and performance criteria. Conceptually, the term “performance” needs to be determined and understood precisely in conjunction with several distinguished principles:

(1) as-built building Characteristics

(2) building upgrades, renovations, and reconfigurations

(3) environmental results and consequences of sustainable strategies.

To fully utilize Green BIM merits, the implementation must be properly planned and designed according to the objectives of the proposed projects, concurrently depreciating the barriers that might disrupt the progress. So much more effort is needed from the implementers so that ‘Green BIM’ can be utilized at its full potential to improve the sustainability of green building projects.

Conclusion

Preserving sustainability in the construction industry could lead to a more vibrant built environment. Green BIM as one of the sustainable development platforms conceivably could assist in accomplishing the sustainability goals. The construction players gain many advantages when integrating BIM into their green and sustainable building projects. The benefits include reducing errors and reworks due to digital models’ coordination, accelerating conventional processes, saving time and cost, encouraging more effective communication and collaboration within project teams, and many more. Nonetheless, despite the benefits gained from the execution of Green BIM in the construction industry, some challenges must be addressed along with the implementation process.

The main conclusion is the deduced organizational framework to regulate and optimize collaboration and maturity potentials of a BIM model as a strategic basis for firms to produce green buildings. The proposed framework can be developed and modified as a practical strategy depending on the policy of each organization or company. This will eventually lead to the usage of BIM to its full potential for the development of green building projects.

Author: Laxmi Mishra

References:

Green BIM

Written by Civil Engineering Consortium IIT Roorkee