Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Application of Building Information Modeling for an Institutional Building

Abstract

Sam Joseph*, Rahul Sasikumar, Malavika Anil and Prasanna Venkatesan R

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is widely seen as a catalyst for innovation and productivity in the construction industry. While BIM is increasingly being adopted in developed countries, implementations in the developing country context are rare. Research has established how construction firms struggle from several limitations having to do with the socio-economic and technological environment found in developing countries. Case studies shows that BIM does enhance the traditional scheduling and cost estimating methods with a more reliable and automated technology. Due to numerous steps of construction industry and its complicated and extensive structure, errors and reworks often might happen in this section. As such, BIM (Building Information Modeling) is regarded as a beneficial tool in minimizing the waste and improving the efficiency of building construction. This project is an application of Building Information Modeling which is an upcoming topic in the field of construction planning and management. We selected an institutional building to show the application of Building Information Modeling using software like Revit (2018) and Navisworks Manage (2018). We wanted to show the application of BIM which would make the construction of a humungous project like an educational institutional building to be more precise and well managed within the limited time frame. We collected data such as the floor plans and elevations of the new Gandhi Block (School of Architecture) in VIT, Vellore campus and created a 3-Dimensional model of the building using the Revit (2018) software. By creating a 3-D model we were able to give a real life representation of the building. We created the 3-D model according to the dimensions and specifications in the floor plan and elevation provided to us. We then transferred the model to the Navisworks Manage software for simulation the time constraint. As majority of the building construction was completed at the time of the project, we collected the actual start and finish dates of construction of different components and parts of the building. We created a CSV excel file with the time schedule of the entire construction process including start and finish dates of each process. The file was then added to Navisworks manage. We created sets for each building components like flooring, walls, windows, doors and ceiling for each floor. We then linked the sets to the activity and their respective dates to create the time constraint simulation. Creating this sort of a time constraint simulation will help us get a virtual idea or image of the completion of the entire project part by part and helps managing the construction more efficiently and precisely.