Integrated BIM-Based LCA for the Entire Building Process Using an Existing Structure for Cost Estimation in the Swiss Context
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Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management, ETH Zurich, Stefano Franscini Platz 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
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Project Excellence and Services (PES) Global—Building Information Modelling (BIM), Implenia Schweiz AG, Industriestrasse 24, 8305 Dietlikon, Switzerland
3
Sustainable Building Group, Division of Building Technology, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(9), 3748; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093748
Received: 28 February 2020
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Revised: 21 April 2020
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Accepted: 2 May 2020
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Published: 5 May 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Integration of LCA and BIM for Sustainable Construction)
The building sector has a significant potential to reduce the material resource demand needed for construction and therefore, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Digitalization can help to make use of this potential and improve sustainability throughout the entire building’s life cycle. One way to address this potential is through the integration of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into the building process by employing Building Information Modeling (BIM). BIM can reduce the effort needed to carry out an LCA, and therefore, facilitate the integration into the building process. A review of current industry practice and scientific literature shows that companies are lacking the incentive to apply LCA. If applied, there are two main approaches. Either the LCA is performed in a simplified way at the beginning of the building process using imprecise techniques, or it is done at the very end when all the needed information is available, but it is too late for decision-making. One reason for this is the lack of methods, workflows and tools to implement BIM-LCA integration over the whole building development. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to develop an integrated BIM-LCA method for the entire building process by relating it to an established workflow. To avoid an additional effort for practitioners, an existing structure for cost estimation in the Swiss context is used. The established method is implemented in a tool and used in a case study in Switzerland to test the approach. The results of this study show that LCA can be performed continuously in each building phase over the entire building process using existing Building Information Modeling (BIM) techniques for cost estimation. The main benefit of this approach is that it simplifies the application of LCA in the building process and therefore gives incentives for companies to apply it. Moreover, the re-work caused by the need for re-entering data and the usage of many different software tools that characterize most of the current LCA practices is minimized. Furthermore, decision-making, both at the element and building levels, is supported.
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Keywords:
Building Information Modeling (BIM); building process; cost estimation structure embodied environmental impacts; greenhouse gas emissions (GHG); LCA benchmarks; LCA databases; LCA values; Level of Development (LOD); Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
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Externally hosted supplementary file 1
Doi: 10.20944/preprints202003.0012.v1
Link: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202003.0012/v1
Description: Integrated BIM-based LCA for the entire building process using an existing structure for cost estimation in the Swiss context
MDPI and ACS Style
Naneva, A.; Bonanomi, M.; Hollberg, A.; Habert, G.; Hall, D. Integrated BIM-Based LCA for the Entire Building Process Using an Existing Structure for Cost Estimation in the Swiss Context. Sustainability 2020, 12, 3748. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093748
AMA Style
Naneva A, Bonanomi M, Hollberg A, Habert G, Hall D. Integrated BIM-Based LCA for the Entire Building Process Using an Existing Structure for Cost Estimation in the Swiss Context. Sustainability. 2020; 12(9):3748. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093748
Chicago/Turabian StyleNaneva, Anita, Marcella Bonanomi, Alexander Hollberg, Guillaume Habert, and Daniel Hall. 2020. "Integrated BIM-Based LCA for the Entire Building Process Using an Existing Structure for Cost Estimation in the Swiss Context" Sustainability 12, no. 9: 3748. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093748
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