Building Information Modeling

7Building Information Modeling for Existing Buildings – Deconstruction Planning and Management

Rebekka VOLK

Institute for Industrial Production, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

7.1. Introduction

In recent years, the construction and deconstruction (C&D) sector is digitally developing via so-called building information modeling (BIM). BIM was originally designed to plan and construct new buildings with a shared digital building model. Today, these models not only store building data in a centralized repository and structured way that makes it reusable for different purposes, but also allow for stakeholder cooperation. BIM information can be used to manage, retrofit, renovate or dismantle/ deconstruct existing buildings. Recent trends show the application shift from use in design to application in retrofitting projects (Hübner et al. 2018). But BIM for end-of-life scenarios of buildings is often neglected (Akinade et al. 2017a) despite a “growing awareness of Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste issues” (Charef et al. 2019).

In industrialized countries, there is an enormous stock¹ of existing profane, historic and landmarked buildings (Sanchez and Haas 2018) and old, partly obsolete facilities² (e.g. nuclear power plants). However, most of the existing buildings have no BIM (Hossain and Yeoh 2018). In addition, “modifications and deviations of the original building structure, equipment and fittings as well as the deterioration and contamination of buildings are ...