Entrant details
Role or Job Title on the Project
Clustermanager Digitalisation - Senior Business Developer
Employer
TNO, Delft, The Netherlands
Employer Role
Academic or Research Institution
Are you or your employer a member of buildingSMART?
Yes - Sponsor Member (Standard, Multinational or Strategic)
Submission details
Submitting Party Company Name
TNO
Submitting Party Company Location
Delft, the Netherlands
Submitting Party Role on Project
Project leader, architect, developer
Submitting Party Company Website
Full Project Name
"Automated checking against Building Decree based on BIM Bots technology"
Project Location (Country)
Netherlands
Project Objectives
Commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior, TNO has developed a PoC to calculate the impact of a building on the environment, from an IFC (in the cloud), fully automated. Several data sources have been approached and by means of algorithmic based checking calculations are made without burdening the end user with large modeling guidelines. In other words: Even if the IFC is not fully encoded and/or contains errors, we can work with it. Of course, applications such as machine learning, voxelisation, the open source BIM server and BIMsurfer (Viewer) are used to interpret and present the final results.
openBIM Achievements
Because of the many different software applications in the BIM world, it is almost impossible for software to communicate directly with each other. Each product is used for a specific application, an architect needs different functionality than an engineer and a manufacturer wants to go into great detail. Moreover, this software has its own, often closed, data formats. The application of open BIM within the Dutch governmentel initiative "Common Ground principle" is a major step towards an open, transparent government in which data can be exchanged more quickly and more securely, both internally and externally, in compliance with privacy rules.
openBIM used
IFC 2x3
Software used
https://github.com/opensourceBIM/BIMserver
IfcOpenShell, which uses OpenCascade internally.
Strategic Alignment
A BIM model that is used for automatic permit checking will have to have specific properties. An IDM must therefore be developed for this purpose. However, no discipline in the chain will develop a complete BIM model. Everyone uses the information that is sufficient for their own application to be able to carry out their own work properly. The BIM models of architects, engineers, suppliers and other disciplines are called aspect models. Therefore, a BIM used for the present application will have to be aggregated from the different aspect models of the chain partners; an aggregated open BIM model.
Highlights
- In case of good IFC data (clear material descriptions that can also be understood as humans) 80% is already well matched.
- With MPG tools now on the market, the user has to import the building properties himself or fill in everything manually and select product cards to generate a BoM. The BIM Bots technology performs these steps fully automatically and autonomously.
- The BIM Bots technology demonstrates a time saving. For comparison, an MPG report often has a turnaround time of at least 1 day, where this BIM Bots technology takes minutes to an hour to generate a report.
- Less error-prone because working with single source IFC and nothing needs to be transferred manually, errors made by BIM Bots technology are consistent, reproducible and can be corrected in future versions.
- The technology can be used to make an MPG calculation, to automatically check whether the requirements of the laws and regulations have been met and to support the design phase. A BIM Modeller can replace a material with a high environmental impact score during the design phase and investigate the impact of an alternative product choice.
- Report is generated automatically. The results are transparent and unambiguous and do not depend on the person performing the check. This is a great advantage for quality assurance / public officers.
Project and Stakeholder Logos (compiled into one .ppt/pptx file for upload)
Project Address
This is an technology development, no address needed
Project Type
(Other)
Size of Project
- Approx 1 million €,
- 1.5 - 2 years development
Detailed description of the project
A building must not pose a danger to residents, users and the environment. That is why the government has laid down regulations for safety, health, usability, energy efficiency and the environment in the Building Decree. A building must always comply with these regulations. Testing against this Building Decree is a common activity within the building process in which several parties are involved. However, each of the parties carries out the relevant tests themselves and the parties share the results on an ad hoc basis. This inefficiency has a negative impact on the quality of the construction process. A development that has a positive influence on the quality is that Building parties are making more and more use of BIM to share data. If it becomes possible, on the basis of this data, to also test against the requirements of the Buildings Decree and share them uniformly, the quality of the design, execution and delivery will also improve and the entire construction process will become more efficient. This is in line with the policy of the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations to increase the quality of construction.
In the PoC, TNO indicates how the requirements of the Buildings Decree can be tested on the basis of a new technology based on BIM. The work required to further develop this so-called BIM Bots technology and to develop an application with which a building can be tested against the requirements of the Buildings Decree in various phases of the building process, is extensive. Part of the BIM Bots architecture is given substance, which is necessary to be able to carry out the test against the new requirement for the Environmental Performance of Buildings (MPG) according to the Buildings Decree automatically.
This PoC demonstrates that it is possible to automatically test against the requirements of the Buildings Decree using the BIM Bots technology. The PoC was realised in the period 2019-2020.
Two main objectives were achieved with this PoC. On the one hand a basis will be laid for the BIM Bots architecture and on the other hand a first application was developed (Automatische toets Bouwbesluit, more specifically the MPG test) to demonstrate that such an application is possible with the help of this BIM Bots technology.
TNO explaines in this project how algorithmic based checking of BIM can save a lot of time and add transparency, which translates into less end user stress. Machine Learning (towards AI) works in this project and could be applied to automate the process using (open-source) BIM bots, This "MPG BIM Bot" is an algorithm based tool for environmental impact checking in the Netherlands. An MPG report often has a turnaround time of at least 1 day but using "MPG BIM Bots" it takes minutes to an hour to generate a report.
Automatic testing against the Buildings Decree based on BIM Bots technology will contribute to improving the quality and efficiency of the building process and the quality of the building. It will also reduce the costs of testing against the Buildings Decree and make it easier to compare multiple design alternatives. This is directly in line with the objective of the Minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations to increase the quality in the construction process in which the wishes of the building consumer can play a central role. This approach can also be used within the current system of assessment of the building application by the municipality. In addition, it links up directly with the proposed system of private quality assurance in which the building must be assessed at the time of delivery.
Detailed description of openBIM on the project
For this project we are working on the basis of the open standard IFC, which makes it possible for different parties to share the information with each other. BIM makes it possible to view the building in different dimensions and it can be used during different phases of the building process and the management phase of the building. In addition to sharing information, BIM data also allows various activities to be carried out automatically on the basis of this information. This involves, for example, testing the building against the requirements of the Buildings Decree. Please see the attachments for more details.
Software ecosystem map
openBIM Supporting Evidence
Benefits from using openBIM
TNO has developed the principles of the so-called BIM Bots technology. Robots (the Bots) can autonomously read data from a BIM model, perform an analysis and feed back the result to the user and enrich the data from the BIM model. An important point is that the BIM Bots technology, just like openBIM, is also based on open standards. As a result, several parties will soon be able to develop and make Bots available and Bots users will be able to use a set of Bots themselves and not be dependent on a particular software supplier (a so-called vendor lock-in). TNO has shown in several EU projects how the BIM Bots technology can be used. This concerns the EU projects ELASSTIC and STREAMER.
BIM Uses were defined on the project
I agree to be contacted about the project BIM uses outside of this awards program.
Stakeholders
