Sustainable BIM-based Evaluation of Buildings

For a sustainable building, the use of energy always concerns clients and designers. In this respect, the UK national regulation on energy performance and ‘carbon’ accounting has asked for a greater consistency of construction information to achieve the CO2 emission target. Therefore, Clients and Industry should work closely together in developing plans to make the transition to low carbon buildings feasible in order to meet the CO2 emission target. In this context, Building Information Modelling (BIM) can play a key role in addition to its capability to create more homogenisation of the construction supply-chain. For the energy analysis packages, the designers usually receive feedback on their design; such as how much energy the building will use, what are the anticipated CO2 emissions and if the building will pass performance criteria (such as: LEED or BREEAM). BIM applications for energy analysis have been introduced to improve this process but mostly at the design stage. However, for the post-occupancy stage, there is a need for a proper and systematic methodology to monitor the behaviour of buildings and to make critical decisions to ensure that the energy criteria of the design are really met in practice. This paper introduces a conceptual BIM-based model that can improve the post-occupancy evaluation process and meet the industry requirements for sustainable buildings.