Chapter 17: Exploitation of BIM in Planning and Controlling the Construction Phase On-site Carbon Emissions: A 6D BIM Case Study
In the midst of rising concerns regarding climate change and global warming, the current construction management practices are not sufficiently considering the on-site greenhouse-gases (GHGs) including carbon emissions produced during the construction phase, and are limited in utilizing the building information modelling (BIM) techniques and keeping up with the latter’s fast growing implementation in the construction industry. This chapter proposes a BIM-based framework capable of developing and exploiting a 6D BIM Model for pre-construction management, planning and control of the construction phase on-site carbon emissions to support decision makers identify the construction phase’s necessary corrective actions and best practices before the phase commences. A case study is conducted for a hypothetical BIM-based construction project to validate the proposed framework. The results demonstrated that BIM can be utilized as a powerful means to assist in early holistic planning and strategic decision-making involving the construction phase key dimensions including time, cost and on-site carbon emissions. The core contribution made by this research is the facilitation for sustainability champions and others concerned with the environmental impacts of the project’s construction phase to be involved within the project’s BIM environment and processes, while on the other hand, enable as well those already involved with BIM to include the environmental targets and benchmarks within the project’s BIM processes and collaborative common data environment, while keeping an eye and maintaining a holistic view over the other major two dimensions of the project: time and cost.