Assessing the impact of new rules of cost planning on BIM schema pertinent to quantity surveying practice

Not until recently, the establishment of a whole life cycle budget for a constructed facility largely depended on the initiative of using the standard method of measurements (SMM) structural approach to the development of a cost or budget plan. This method, argues the RICS (2009), “created inconsistency in measurement and descriptions, resulting in the production of unclear basis for the estimates”. The constraints associated with traditional cost planning and estimating tend to be compounded by the complexity associated with the deployment of building information model (BIM) technology that is pertinent to the achievement of whole life cycle cost management of a constructed facility. This research is aimed at exploring the impact of the new rules of measurement on the building information model schema pertinent to the quantity surveying practice on construction based projects. The research presumes that even though the new rules of measurement are not mandatory, they are likely to influence cost planning and estimating practice because they have been developed with a view to setting “the best practice” in the development of cost plans. The likely impact could subsequently affect the current building information model schema for cost management