Ability of BIM to satisfy CAFM information requirements

Abstract

Facilities Management (FM) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) are contemporary day concepts that have modernised the way built environment behave. In modern day, FM concepts are moving towards to sustainable FM (SFM). Incidentally, Facilities Managers (FMs) become responsible for assuring the sustainability of facilities of the business. Modern day buildings are increasingly sophisticated and the need for information to operate and maintain them in sustainable manner is vital. Currently FMs rely on the information of the facility retrieved from conventional Computer Aided FM (CAFM). However, FM professionals face challenges from existing information inefficiencies resulting in unnecessary costs, productivity, efficiency and effectiveness losses where these leads to failure of SFM. Considering its favourable features, BIM had been identified as promising solution to effectively reach SFM goals. BIM conceptually has been developed to overcome the inefficiencies in conventional building information systems and recording methods. Combined data would enable the art of making any building more intelligent and sustainable. Significant efforts were found which had focused on getting the benefit of BIM for FM. However, there was no certain answer to “how far could BIM satisfy the information needs of CAFM?’’ This paper proposes a methodology to theoretically answer this question, which had been proposed for the next step of the study being conducted in Sri Lanka.