BIM-integrated system for automated value analysis of buildings

Analyzing the value of buildings and how this value is affected by the various design decisions is vital for delivering value-adding buildings. The value of a building to a specific stakeholder is a function of the stakeholder's personal value system (the personal values of that stakeholders and their order of priority) and the building properties. Building information modeling (BIM) can, thus, facilitate the execution of the value analysis process, in an efficient and accurate manner, because it allows for a rich representation of building properties. To achieve such efficient and accurate value analysis, there is a need to develop a BIM-integrated automated value analysis system that can directly retrieve value-specific information from a building information model and use it for assessing the value of a building to its stakeholders, based on their own personal value systems. To address this need, this paper proposes an automated value analysis system that is integrated with BIM. The proposed system is composed of three modules: (1) a module for soliciting information about a stakeholder's personal value system; (2) a module for retrieving value-specific design information (i.e., relevant and sufficient information for value analysis including building objects and their properties) from a BIM model; and (3) a module for quantifying and aggregating the value of a building to a stakeholder based on the stakeholder's personal value system and the building properties. The proposed system was evaluated using a case study that analyzes the value of a two-story apartment building to its stakeholders. The preliminary results show that the proposed system could support more effective and efficient value-sensitive decision making by allowing stakeholders to explore and identify high-value design alternatives efficiently-with less time and effort.