Circular Building Assessment

Data management and decision making models

Background

BAMB´s mission is to enable the shift to a circular building sector. In a building project there are many decisions and calculations regarding choice of materials, products and components as well as design and assembly. In order to make informed decisions developers and designers need easy accessible ways to compare and see outcomes of different building materials and design choices in relation to resource productivity.

 

Decision making models

To support resource effective decision making in the building process a decision making model, Building Level Integrated Decision Making Model, will be developed in BAMB. The model is a methodology whereby new buildings and existing buildings can be assessed for resource productivity, based upon material selection and design decisions.

A selected subset of this model will be developed into a BIM compliant Circular Building Assessment Prototype. The ambition is to provide a useful prototype as a proof of concept of how the assessment and decision making model could aid real World BIM users in making better choices and designs to enhance reuse potential and transformation capacity through the different phases of the life cycle of the building (design, construction, management & maintenance, refurbishing, dismantling).

 

Reuse potential

The Building Level Integrated Decision Making model will measure resource productivity as a relative reuse potential. For example, a building product has a 100% reuse potential immediately prior to installation in a building. If the design decision is made to install in a way that the product cannot be extracted intact, this results in a 100% reduction in reuse potential.

If the product is installed in such a way as to retain all of its reuse potential, then other decisions and activities will affect reuse potential throughout its host building life cycle, such as reduction in service life, applying paints or incorrect maintenance.

 

Circular Building Assessment Prototype

The Circular Building Assessment Prototype will be delivered as a Beta version software product that can access data from a BIM/ CAD model and combine with BAMB generated datasets and other external/user supplied data to provide assessment of reuse potential based upon design decisions and material selection criteria. This means that the product and design information needed to create the BIM also can be used to assess reuse potential, and an additional data layer relating to resource productivity can then be viewed alongside more traditional performance parameters such as work scheduling, project cost, energy performance etc.

This will result in a resource productivity data layer for a building, displayed in 3D form. Changing materials or design could result in a variation in the overall building/ building element level ‘score’ for reuse potential.

Read more about the Circular Building Assessment Prototype 

Read about BIM

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