Integration of Building Information Modeling with Value Engineering Analysis to Develop Sustainable Construction Projects in Egypt

Abstract

The recent accelerated development of the information management process has contributed to further technical developments in the construction industry. This affects the development of building design in the implementation of buildings with a high level of environmental performance, the application and assessment of sustainable construction requirements. Egypt is one of the countries facing the challenge of not adopting technology among stakeholders. As a result, the construction industry is not in line with the rapid development of the process of information management for the sustainable construction industry in developed countries. Sustainability has also not yet been identified as an important factor in the performance of the project and therefore the value of the project. Hence, there is a need for better tools and increased use of technology to improve sustainable building efficiency. It is important to examine the design of sustainable construction projects and to consider all possible alternatives, especially at the design stage, in order to achieve the best sustainable design. This problem may become very difficult when the choice of alternative depends on the assessment of a number of alternatives related to a number of criteria. The use of Building Information Modeling and Value Engineering has helped to provide further improvements in sustainable design and technical development in the construction industry. BIM coupled with VE can generate innovative alternatives, evaluate and compare different alternatives using AHP model. Many researchers are interested in the AHP because of its mathematical properties and the fact that the necessary input data are relatively simple to obtain. AHP is a basic approach to decision making. It is designed to choose the best alternative from a number of alternatives with multi-criteria. The objective of this thesis is to presents a framework for the integration of BIM with VE to improve and evaluate sustainable design at the early design stage of a project, which include: 1) Provides a questionnaire to study the expected benefits of integrating BIM with VE. The opinions of construction industry participants were taken to assess the impact of the BIM application with VE. 2) Developing a 5D BIM model that integrate BIM with VE. This integration based a number of alternatives created to visualization capabilities of specifications, schedules and costs using the Navisworks simulation. 3) Study the energy efficiency of buildings by analyzing weather and virtual environment data with the DesignBuilder tool. 4) Assess the relative environmental impacts of building materials used in the alternative design through environmental emission analysis using SimaPro. 5) Life Cycle Assessment is considered through the LEED rating system according to ISO 14040 standards. 6) Develop a multi attributed decision environment to choose an optimal sustainable design alternative. A model using a computational programming platform in C# is proposed by Visual Basic Studio for AHP to evaluate the data. This research has shown the importance of integrating BIM with VE in construction industry as a powerful tool that contributes to the improve sustainable design. The questionnaire focused on achieving an overview of the importance of BIM use and VE in the Egyptian construction industry. The majority of responses agree that the integration of BIM with VE offers several benefits that can improve project success. The model was applied to case study to verify its use and capabilities by creating three different alternatives. The results demonstrated the importance of the model in evaluating and selecting the most appropriate design alternative. Also, the model has been validated by engineers that have a good experience in the field of construction industry. The model with its components, the nature of its use, and access to outputs are applicable and effective, where performance is estimated at 84%.