Context
Ensuring an efficient functionality of a building or infrastructure, Facility Management (FM) can significantly affect the economic and environmental impacts of the life cycle. One of the main problems of FM processes is connected to the management of data and documents, developed from the early stage of design, but fragmented and linked exclusively to a specific discipline or phase of the life cycle. This aspect, together with the possible loss of information during the several steps of the building process, results particularly expensive and time consuming for the facility manager that needs to reconstruct a coherent and structured database.
After the financial-economic crisis of 2008, the attention for the optimization of industrial processes and waste reduction has increasingly grown, leading to relaunch and update the FM software market, to support the digitalization of operational and maintenance tasks, as well as planning and monitoring activities. The newest FM software can have different focuses and specialties, for example, the generation of detailed and comparative analysis, collecting and organizing the considerable amount of data in a systemic way, the support in the management of documents and files, deadlines and facility consumption (i.e. energy, water, goods) or the accounting management for operations of different complexity.
At the same time, the whole construction industry is dealing with a digital transformation, promoted by the European Union and implemented by national governments with different strategies. In Italy, the New Procurement Code (D. Lgs. 50/2016) preannounced the mandatory adoption of digital tools, such as Building Information Modelling (BIM), for public projects above specific thresholds of economic value, which will progressively decrease from 2019 until 2025.
The spread of BIM implementation, together with the evolution FM software, will progressively lead to a digitalized management of real estate assets. As an information management methodology of the construction process, BIM requires an approach oriented to the creation, sharing and management of data. Similarly, FM software are strongly connected to data acquisition, organization, processing and visualisation. Considering the trend of BIM implementation and digitalization of the construction sector, an informative 3D model could support the development of strategic and operational FM activities.
During the life cycle of a construction, a wide amount of data can progressively be collected and stored within a Building Information Model, in order to be exchanged and further developed by different AEC operators (i.e. designers, suppliers, manufacturers, clients, building companies, facility managers), according to a flexible, integrated and multidisciplinary process. At the same time, considering an existing building and the amount of available data and their heterogeneous nature, the management of data results particularly complex and the exchange of data requires special attention. To avoid working with a model overloaded of unnecessary or redundant data and to prevent the loss of essential data for the planned applications, it could be helpful to apply targeted filters.
The integration of data modelled by different discipline has been studied especially focusing on the design phase, while remains to explore data integration potential during the operational phase. There are several overlapping data between the design phase and the operational phase, therefore BIM data modelled during the design phase, as well as BIM data developed from the survey of an existing building can serve as input data for FM software, in order to optimize the process.