Optimizing green design of buildings using building information modeling

Abstract

Energy performance of the buildings has been a subject topic for years due to many reasons such as nancial bene ts, environmental and social concerns. All these cause a tendency in the construction sector for analysing the energy performance of the buildings with the aim of increasing the energy e ciency of the building which eventually results in a reduce in the operational costs. Realising the bene ts of Building Information Modeling (BIM), energy analysis of the buildings is shifted from being in a paper to a computer with the help the softwares in which the base model and the design alternatives can easily be updated and evaluated in terms of their energy performance. However, only energy performance of a design alternative is not enough to choose that alternative. These design alternatives should also be evaluated in terms of money to assess their feasibility using life cycle costing (LCC). The main aim of this research is to achieve an optimum green design in terms of LCC among the design alternatives for a residential project created in a BIM enabled environment based on both experts opinion and literature review. The results obtained at the end of this research reveal how investments could have dramatic e ects on reducing the energy need of the buildings which results in signi cant reduce in the operational costs. Among the major contributions of this research are the evaluation of energy performance in a 30-year service life using LCC; evidence for signi cant nancial bene ts for energy improvements in early design phase of the projects; and proposal of energy performance analysis frameworks for companies based on two options (either through consultancy or in-house).