Automating BIM Objects Quantity Take-Off for Lifecycle Costing of Cleaning Operations

Abstract

By 2022, the Danish government will require mandatory evaluation of lifecycle costs (LCC) for new buildings, as opposed to only considering procurement costs. The maturing building industry sector looks towards LCC as a source of competitive advantage. LCCbyg is a tool released by the Danish authorities to calculate lifecycle costs. As the quantity take-off is mostly manual, we investigate ways of automating it. Multiple methods exist for calculating procurement costs at an object level. The same cannot be said about operational costs, where methods mainly rely on building areas. The generic approximations fail to account for object quantity, type, and materials. Therefore, the objective of this study was twofold; firstly, to investigate the potential for basing operational costs on objects, and secondly, to develop and test a data transfer method, integrating independent software packages for design and costing. The industry stakeholders were invited to test the data transfer prototype, showcased on two Building Information Models (BIMs); an operational, and a conceptual model of two office buildings. The proposed approach transferred Revit object quantities to the LCCbyg XML schema, and the operational cost data has been visualized using PowerBI. To conclude, the stakeholders saw the benefits of basing operational data on objects, while also pointed at obstacles concerning a lack of model detail in the early design phase. Despite a successful data transfer, practical implementation will require further integration with cost databases and other subsets of LCC calculations to be considered a complete solution.