Information Exchange Standardization for BIM Application to Multi-Story Modular Residential Buildings

摘要

Proper information exchange and integration of different project phases are the two fundamental needs of the construction industry. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has had a significant effect on the construction industry during the past decade. Modular building industry can potentially take advantage of BIM at least as much as site-built construction where most of the BIM application is. However, currently there is no specific standard or BIM platform for modular constructions. As a result, the integration level of information in this industry is relatively low, and this increases the project costs and complexity. This article will present a method to standardize the information exchanges for this type of construction. In the proposed methodology, first the product information will be organized; this will be done by developing the Product Architecture Model (PAM) for modular buildings. Then, a hierarchy of the physical assemblies and sub-assemblies of the building and corresponding modules will be developed, followed by assignment of nonphysical properties and attributes of each element. Next, an Information Delivery Manual (IDM) will be developed based on the National BIM Standard (NBEVIS) method and the proposed PAM. The last step would involve development of Model View Definitions (MVDs) for different information exchanges at different phases of the project and between different disciplines based on the IFC file format data structure. Use of the IFC data structure for standardization of information exchanges will result in a highly interoperable BIM platform that could be used in a wide range of BIM software.