A Framework for Building Design Management in an Imperfect BIM Environment

Building design process is a wide spectrum activity, regarding its complexity. It begins by simple compartments structures till large multistory administrative buildings, involving various specialties. Complex design management, where a multidisciplinary team or teams are involved in the design process; requires high level of collaboration to reach the optimized client goals economically and on time. BIM provides a wide range support for such an activity, where the most critical criterion in design management is ensuring the appropriate flow of information between design partners. Each participant in the design process should receive relevant data or information in a complete form and on time. And consequently design participant should send and share their design outputs with relevant personnel. The perfect BIM environment requires that all participants within the design process are using BIM supporting software, and vice versa. Markets where BIM application is still in the growing phase some of the design participants adopt BIM while others don’t. The main target of this paper is to propose a collaborative scheme to ensure information flow between design participants, using COBIE forms and XBIM toolkit; in the case where some of the participants in design process are not using BIM supporting software.


Introduction
Mostly in environments, where BIM culture is still growing some of the participants in the design process adopt BIM based software, as a platform for their work; while others don't.This situation handicaps both BIM based and non BIM based participants, due to lack of reliable information transfer schemes between the two groups of participants.This situation has arisen the need for a tool oriented to bridging the gap between BIM using and non BIM using design participants.This paper presents such a tool in the form of a frame work, defining main design process elements, associated with two supporting tools.COBIE has been used for information transfer, while the BIM toolkit for information verification.

COBie Forms
COBie had been early invented to transfer data from the design to the construction to the facility management processes.They consist of a number of fixed format spread sheets, summarizing projects information.Each COBie form deals with specific type of information.This paper presents COBie forms not only to fill in the missing node in data transfer chain between design, construction, and facility management; but also as a tool for bridging the gap between BIM and non-BIM users.COBie forms have been automatically generated using the COBie extension plugin, as shown in Figure 1.It is not a must to transfer all COBie sheets every exporting cycle.A selective approach is to be adopted, to decide which sheets are to be exported, according to data required for sharing.

XBIM Xplorer
The XBIM Toolkit is an open source tool established to allow opening and rendering BIM models, in addition checking building model contents, to ensure all required fields are dragged into the model, defining various element's properties.It is compatible with IFC format and consequently able to support all software packages, prepared in accordance with IFC.XBIM Xplorer can't judge the quality of the BIM model contents.It just states whether the required fields are filled or empty.This nature of IFC clarifies its role in the imperfect BIM environment, where it allows human role to arise in managing to complete the BIM model.Figure 2 shows the XBIM Xplorer user interface, where information is represented in tabular and graphical forms.

Building Information History
Figure 3 shows patterns of building information history in case of BIM, Imperfect BIM, and non-BIM approaches.The perfect BIM environment ensures smooth flow of information throughout the design and construction processes.Once construction finishes a drop in processed data takes place, due to the use of COBie forms that keeps only essential information, required for facility management.On the other hand the non-BIM based approach faces multiple data drops between different stages throughout the building life cycle.The imperfect BIM environment design represents a compromise between the perfect BIM and the non-BIM approaches.The imperfect BIM environment approach sustains a smooth flow of data between various stages along building life cycle, in the same pattern as perfect BIM approach; but conserving a lower amount of building information, because only some of the design parties are using BIM tools.
Figure 3. Building conserved information history

The Proposed Framework
The COBie forms in conjunction with XBIM Xplorerare considered complementary tools, used to ensure that the general BIM model is functioning efficiently.XBIM Xplorer is directly used in a frequent bases during the design to tune the process and validate the adequacy of model embedded data.While COBie is used for both documentation in a text form and assisting non-BIM participants to proceed in design activities.
Research body has been formulated as a flowchart, by which the implementation process is clarified.Each step in the flow chart is clearly formulated and inter-relationships between various steps are also presented.Figure 4 shows successive steps of the framework in the form of a flowchart.

Framework Implementation
Implementation of the proposed framework has been performed in a redesign process of a hospital project.The redesign was a client requirement to take into account some modifications, required for equipment installation.These modifications required re-assigning of spaces within different floors.Figures 5 to 16 show the reassigned floor spaces, in addition to isometrics and inter-plans relationships.Tables 1 up to 3 show data associated with the functional plans, in the form of COBie spread sheets; to complete the image for reassigned spaces for non-BIM participants.
A general goal throughout the design process, is to ensure all data required for each design activity are available to the responsible in a suitable form and on time.Some data may require verification, others need acceptance, while other data should be avoided.Disciplinary protocols should define for each discipline what type of data must be verified, or should be accepted, or could be avoided.

Conclusion
1) The proposed framework proved its reliability in information sharing.
2) The framework minimized loss of data through conversion from a form to another during design and construction stage.
3) The framework decreased required time for design implementation, by efficiently sharing data and decreasing inquires.
4) COBie forms could be applied within the design stage, even before beginning of construction activities.
5) The proposed framework could bring BIM and non-BIM participants to the same platform.
6) The frame work could be implemented in environments, where BIM is still a new culture.

Table 1 .
Contact spread sheet

Table 2 .
Floor spread sheet