IFC BIM-Based Facility Management Approach to Optimize Data Collection for Corrective Maintenance

Facility managers are required to collect high-quality data to achieve corrective maintenance actions. Current facility management (FM) information systems are complex and provide high-quality data. However, they lack interoperability and visualization capabilities. The goal of this study is to improve the quality of data collected that is required for corrective maintenance by utilizing visualization and interoperability capabilities of building information modeling (BIM). To achieve that, an approach that implements industry foundation classes (IFC) BIM to link and present alarms reported by FM systems, such as building energy management systems (BEMS) and building automation systems (BAS), with related data from computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) was developed and validated on a typical university building. The results showed an efficiency increase in high-quality maintenance data collection. The proposed approach supplements the existing body of knowledge in the FM domain by providing a schema that integrates corrective maintenance data in a three-dimensional (3D) IFC-BIM environment. Moreover, it provides a process to minimize the corrective maintenance lead-time and link equipment failures to the related maintenance information. FM practitioners can use this approach to decrease the lead-time needed corrective maintenance responses and focus their resources on productive maintenance tasks.