Minimising Material Waste by Utilising BIM and Set-based Design in the Structural Design of Reinforced Concrete Slabs

摘要

Considering the significant amount of material wasted in the construction industry it should be a business case for companies to pay more attention to reducing waste, which would have also a major impact in the environmental issues of the projects. Although structural engineers and architectures have different roles in the design process in selecting construction systems and materials, they provide building information together. Building Information Modelling (BIM) could provide an opportunity for all relevant stakeholders to share their knowledge and experiences in the early stages of design and a platform for structural engineers to utilise Set-based Design to considering different alternatives for optimal design of systems. This research suggests enhancing an intelligent decision support model in parallel with stakeholder’s participation to achieve the optimal final solution in terms of material waste by narrowing down the structural alternatives. The example used in the paper is reinforced concrete slab, but the same principles are applicable to all structures. This research will focus on describing the BIM features, which could help the structural engineers to rank their criteria and select optimised design solutions. In addition, this paper will be a part of the first author’s PhD dissertation and analysis the pertinent literature.