A GUIDE ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING ON THE EXISTING FACILITY MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE IN THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE

Abstract

Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a tool for Facility Management (FM) has been drawing much propitious attention from building owners and facility managers in recent years. Since the inception of FM as a supporting function to an organization’s success in the 70s, FM tools have since came a long way with the sophistication of demands from buildings and the advancement of technology. The maturation of FM tools coupled with the enlightenment of BIM in the industry presents an opportune chance to introduce and implement paradigm shifts in the way FM processes are typically carried out. This paper examines precursory literature review on BIM and FM, analyses the applicability of BIM adoption for the conventional manual FM practices, and peruses the full benefits that could be potentially derived as well as the existing barriers in today’s traditional fragmented FM discipline. Despite awareness of the performance improvements that BIM could offer in the field of FM, there are only few who actually considers and adopts such a radical move towards a BIM for FM strategy since project inception stages. Even more so in existing buildings, there is a strong determent for transition from manual processes to one that is in progress with the advent of information technology. Research has attributed the lack of BIM adoption in the FM discipline to three main issues revolving largely around people and process related issues. A single case study was conducted on the National University of Singapore (NUS) to explore the issues relating to BIM for FM. A feasibility study was carried out and backed with interviews with experts in the area of BIM software. This study aims to suggest a BIM-FM strategy with a key focus on replacing traditional 2-dimensional documentation and manual work processes with effective information management databases that not only withstand the changes over time, but also possess capabilities of going mobile as well. Consequently, a guide to ease this transition will be proposed, tackling the people and process related issues at their core. This paper extends the study to new projects with the proposal of a guide for new buildings as well, hence addressing the development of asset information and its collation across the project stages until the final handover to building owners.