Embedding life cycle costing in 5D BIM

Kehily, D; Underwood, J

Abstract

Life Cycle Costing (LCC) is the consideration of all ‘relevant’ costs and revenues associated with the acquisition and ownership of an asset. LCC has a number of relevant applications, these include project appraisal; facilities management; procurement and tendering and as a means to evaluate sustainable construction. Although these advantages are well recognised, the process is underutilised due to a number of documented barriers to adoption. Notably these include lack of accurate historical databases; the perceived complexity and time consuming nature of the calculations; lack of a standard LCC methodology, and that clients are not requesting LCC. The research presented is framed in recognition of these barriers, investigating a process that could affect change by increasing efficiency in this area. A Building Information Modelling (BIM) approach to construction procurement is being increasingly utilised as a collaborative set of procedures and associated technologies that assist design and construction professions in conceiving, designing, constructing and operating the built environment. Although 5D BIM (Cost Modelling) is currently being used in Quantity Surveying (QS) practice, BIM is not extensively used in the application of LCC and there has been limited research in this area to date. The research demonstrates the development of a 5D BIM based LCC solution, where LCC is integrated into the 5D BIM process by embedding an LCC calculation model structure within an existing 5D BIM technology. This process represents a change to the 5D BIM workflow, adding on a facility for LCC through post-processing BIM data. The research is carried out under a design science research methodology, to develop and then evaluate the solution proposed. An evaluation method known as ‘Thinking Aloud cooperative evaluation’ is used to gain feedback from a sample of QSs utilising the 5D BIM based LCC solution. The purpose of the evaluation is to gauge whether LCC can be effectively embedded in a 5D BIM platform. The contribution to knowledge is the articulation of a process which extends 5D BIM for LCC, by leveraging an existing 5D BIM technology. The findings outline that the primary benefits of the proposed process/system is that it allows for a link between the QSs cost plans/BOQ’s and their LCC calculations in an integrated environment.

Citation

Kehily, D., & Underwood, J. (2017). Embedding life cycle costing in 5D BIM. Journal of Information Technology in Construction, 22, 145-167

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 31, 2017
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2017
• Deposit Date: Oct 25, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 25, 2017
• Journal: Journal of Information Technology in Construction
• Volume: 22
• Pages: 145-167
• Publisher URL: http://www.itcon.org/paper/2017/8
• Related Public URLs: http://www.itcon.org/