Current building information models do not usually support the life-cycle costing of buildings, an important tool in the identification of emissions. If life-cycle assessment and data models could be reconciled, it would be possible to reduce emissions more efficiently.

What kind of problem is the project trying to solve?

The life-cycle assessment of buildings is a planning tool for the identification and verification of emissions and for finding areas in which emissions can be reduced.

Life-cycle assessment can be automated directly from a data model, in which case the assessment would be up to 100 times faster. The current forms of data models often do not, however, support the requirements of life cycle-costing and very few implementers of models have the required expertise and knowledge of the needs of life-cycle costing.

Objective: to enable the use of building information models in life-cycle assessment

The objective of the project is to remove the obstacles preventing the use of the existing IFC models in the life-cycle assessment of a building. IFC is the general format used in the modelling of building information.

In addition, the project aims at enabling the use of models in steering and verifying the environmental impact of the life cycle of buildings also on a larger scale.

The objective can be achieved by:

• Surveying how the current format of the models is suited for life-cycle assessment
• Drawing up the minimum requirements for IFC models that are compatible with life-cycle costing.
• Creating a prototype of an automatic model testing tool
• Testing the minimum requirements and the prototype in practical projects

In the future, the expertise generated in the project, the specification requirements and the model testing tool will help architects, structural engineers, model coordinators and others working with models to take into account the requirements of life-cycle costing and create models that support the use of data also in the calculation of emissions in life cycle planning.

The project will be implemented in three stages:

• Survey of the functioning of the current model formats and definition of their minimum requirements (November 2017-February 2018)
• Creation of a Model Checker prototype (January-April 2018)
• Pilot of the requirements and the Model Checker tool (April-June 2018)

Who benefits?

Architects, construction engineers, structural engineers, model coordinators.