BIM Coordination Oriented to Facility Management

Abstract

BIM coordination is an iterative process that requires an accurate roadmap to adequately manage the exchange of information, overcome communication barriers, improve the decision-making environment and guarantee a successful and collaborative work throughout the project's lifecycle. Although the actual coordination practice satisfies the requirement of routing the whole systems in a proper way, it presents a lack of sequential, constructability, operation and maintenance issues. In order to contribute to the BIM coordination process knowledge, this paper introduces a coordination methodology that is based on the sequential approach and includes O&M (Operation and Maintenance) criteria. Regarding the previous idea, the project information should be organized in a coordination matrix that adds accessibility, functionality and installation requirements to each discipline. This proposal guarantees that the maintenance criteria and physical constraints are consistently meet, preserving a continuous flow and identifying wastes, delays, rework and cost overruns from the first stages of the buildings lifecycle. The suggested methodology aims to generate a more efficient coordination process which ensures that all efforts are headed in the right direction. As a result, the coordinated model will become the As-Built one. Keywords Building information modeling (BIM) Á Coordination Á Facility management 15.1 Introduction Building Information Modeling (BIM) is the integration of technology, people and procedures with the intention of reaching a building's desired performance in terms of schedule, costs, systems disposal, sustainability, among others. The vehicle that allows this assimilation is a BIM model, defined by Azhar et al. [1] as "a 3D representation that carries all the information related to the building, including its physical and functional characteristics and project life-cycle information in a series of small objects". A key aspect that BIM consolidation changed notably is coordination, defined as the disposal of all of the systems into the building's envelope, in a way that avoids common interferences which may result in rework and over costs. Coordination used to be a conflictive, strenuous, large and difficult chore, due among other aspects, to the lack of willingness of design consultants to reroute their systems and also to an inaccurate management of information. Although many procedures have changed with the inclusion of BIM, some authors argue that there is a general avoidance of maintenance requirements in the coordination efforts [2-4].