Integrating building information modeling (BIM) and sensor technology for facility management

Today high-performance buildings are equipped with sophisticated monitoring systems and sensors for collecting large amounts of data related to the buildings' indoor environmental quality and energy consumption. To visualize, interpret, and utilize the collected data, facility managers and decision-makers typically use text or spreadsheets, which make it difficult to understand and track the real-time building's performance. Building information modeling (BIM) is a process of developing a virtual equivalent of the actual building that supports data exchange, management and communication during the whole building's life cycle. However, the BIM model cannot show real-time information related to the performance of the building in the operational stage. This paper presents three approaches for integration of the building sensor technology and the BIM process to enable visualization and analysis of real-time and historical readings: (i) Sensor-Revit integration; (ii) Sensor-Revit-Navisworks integration; and (iii) Sensor-Revit-Navisworks-API integration. The comparison between the potential value-adding functions of each approach and the associated limitations is discussed. Furthermore, this is the first work to utilize widely-known and popular Autodesk Navisworks software for development of a user-friendly add-in program to enable real-time and historic data characterization and analysis. The overarching aim of this paper is to improve the efficiency of facility management (FM) and utilize BIM data accessible during building's lifecycle. The university engineering building equipped with a monitoring system for tracking and collecting various building-related parameters is used for demonstration of the developed software technologies. This study demonstrates how BIM-sensor integration can lead to more responsive building management and operation by making sensor data tangible and accessible for property managers, owners, and occupants.