Integration of construction process documents into building information modeling

The work discusses the integration of construction process documents into the Building Information Modeling (BIM). The different phases of the building lifecycle include planning, design, construction, maintenance, and decommissioning. Existing practices facilitate the implementation of BIM only up to the early stages of the construction phase. This is partially due to absence of three dimensional (3D) as-built model and lack of integration of the construction process documents into model. The objective of this research is to extend implementation of the BIM by creating a 3D as-built model, a four dimensional (4D = 3D + time) as-built model, and attaching the construction process information to the model for use during the maintenance and decommissioning phase of the lifecycle. The accomplishment of the research objective was demonstrated through a real time construction project using commercially available BIM software products of three vendors. They are Autodesk, Bentley, and Graphisoft. The methodology adopted for developing a 3D as-built model included using the objective-driven data acquisition technique. This involved using a custom built robotic laser rangefinder mounted on a pan and tilt unit and a robotic total station for the data acquisition of as-built components. The development of the 4D as-built model, and attaching the construction process information to the 3D as-built model involved programming in C, C++, Visual Basic (VB), JScape object Model (JSM), and Geometrical Descriptive Language (GDL). The results indicated that the three vendors\u27 BIM products are not specifically prepared to accomplish the research objective but are adaptable with some programming. The amount of work required for BIM implementation varies depending on the vendor\u27s product. However, further research investigations and software developments are needed to reduce the amount of work required for BIM implementation