Category Archives: BIM Essentials

Documentation and information that we consider are essential starting points for particular areas.

Reduced Carbon Emissions




The strategy report announced the Government’s intention to require “collaborative 3D BIM (with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic) on its projects by 2016.”

The two main goals of requiring the construction supply chain to adopt 3D BIM on key public sector and government projects were:

  1. Reducing capital cost; and
  2. Reducing carbon and operational costs

The savings for capital costs were highlighted as immediate targeted savings from the construction and initial occupation process.

The carbon savings were highlighted as coming from wholife cost evaluations prior to construction commencement, but mainly from improved downstream facilities management and operational decision making choices which could be made based on the availability of detailed BIM data.

BIM data is expected to convey or make it easier to obtain details of carbon emissions for the majority of building components. The carbon figures for the individual components can be scaled up to provide a carbon footprint for entire buildings and reduced back down to units for comparison such as kg/m2 of floor area.

Together with component lifecycle information, the decision making on operational costs and wholelife costs can be used to make better value judgements on maintaining buildings, making more efficient use of water and encouraging innovation in energy efficiency.

BIM data also enables the public sector to have a central database of the assets that are owned by the various public departments and authorities.