Utilization of BIM-based Automated Safety Checking in Construction Planning

The applications of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in building design, construction production planning, and 4D simulation are growing rapidly. BIM-based modeling and simulation has brought many benefits to safety and logistic applications. However, tedious manual work is still required to model and schedule protective equipment in current BIM software. Limited automation in modeling and planning safety processes has been exploited so far. The objective of this paper is to investigate how safety issues that are unknowingly built into the construction schedule can be automatically identified early in the planning phase of a project. The developed automated safety rule-checking prototype for BIM was tested on a residential building project in Finland. The results of the case study demonstrate the feasibility of integrating safety into BIM as an effective and practical method for detecting and eliminating fall-related hazards. Presented are also considerations which explore what impact the developed approach has on safety issues and traditional safety management practices