Using agile project management and BIM for improved building performance

Abstract

The early design stage is the most crucial stage to achieve sustainability targets because this is when major design decisions that affect sustainability performance are taken. A way to facilitate more effective decisions in this stage is to explore as many design alternatives as possible and analyse them to find the optimum one. However, the traditional architecture workflow does not support an iterative design process that allows for the exploration and evaluation of many design alternatives. On the contrary, design decisions are made without supporting performance analysis, which is typically done at the end of the process. On the other hand, other industries such as IT and more specifically software development realised the importance of early analysis and feedback and understood the potential of using an iterative design process for improving product performance. To facilitate this, agile project management was developed which focuses on the incremental development of a product by implementing an iterative process of designing and testing and delivering a better quality product in each iteration. Although the advantages of the agile project management have been proven in the IT industry, this method has hardly been used in the construction industry and the applicability of it has not been studied. This chapter explains the advantages of agile project management through an extended literature review and analyses the potential benefits from the adoption of this methodology in the construction industry and sustainable design process. It introduces an iterative design framework for the design phase of construction projects, using agile principles. Then, it explores how Building Information Modelling (BIM) can facilitate the implementation of this framework to achieve improved building performance.