PROPOSED BIM AND DATA ANALYTIC SYSTEM FOR QUANTITY SURVEYOR

Abstract

The role of quantity surveyor (QS) has evolved over the years with practitioners consistently looking for new areas to strengthen the competitive edge of the profession. The rapid advancement of information technology (IT) in the construction industry requires quantity surveyor (QS) to take the initiative in embracing the more advanced and efficient system. Building information modelling (BIM) is perceived to be the panacea of the construction sector and its information sharing concept could improve QS’s productivity and efficiency into next level, 5D level. Due to the inundation of construction data, BIM and data analytic application is believed to be the next frontier innovation in the built sector not only in Singapore but worldwide. Nonetheless, QS seems lackluster in adopting BIM technology and let alone data analytics. The slow adoption of BIM attribute to various present challenges such as substandard BIM model for costing purpose, data exchange issue, lack of standardization and coding system to integrate the cost and BIM components. Moreover, the data analytics could provide tremendous benefit to QS’s performance by transforming plain data into visually appealing knowledge. Therefore, this study proposed a BIM and Data Analytic System (BDAS) for QS to handle cost-related activities over the project lifecycle. The system incorporated a cost coding system designed based on standard method of measurement (SMM) in Singapore to integrate the BIM components with cost information, utilized Microsoft Access for data management and MicroStrategy Enterprise Platform (MicroStrategy) to transform the various types of data resulted in construction projects into insightful and interactive dashboards, documents and reports.