Building information modelling for the sustainability assessment of buildings according to SNBS

Abstract

In order to achieve sustainable performance of a building, several sustainable rating systems have been implemented worldwide. Based on the Swiss rating system, namely MINERGIE, the standard SNBS was established for the purpose of assessing the quality of a building by means of the three dimensions of sustainable buildings equally. Besides the trend of sustainable design, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been developed for multi-disciplinary information to be superimposed within one model since building projects become very complex and difficult to manage. However, BIM is currently underused mainly due to a lack of interoperability. Because of this lack and the growing concern about the effects and depletion of non-renewable resources the potential of using BIM in SNBS was explored. Therefore, the BIM-based tools; Revit, Ecotect and Lesosai were assessed in terms of their usability, selection of features as well as the quality of their results concerning the building performance analysis. In addition, the indicators of the SNBS-tool were analyzed with the intention of discovering those, which actually can be calculated, by means of a BIM-based tool. Consequently, the six indicators regarding the evaluation of daylight, average life cycle cost, primary energy non-renewable during construction or operation, as well as greenhouse gas emissions during construction or operation were studied in more detail. As a result, it was recognized that the BIM-based tools contain great potential features to consider several indicators of the SNBS-tool. Only Lesosai is already based on the Swiss standard whereas Revit and Ecotect need to be adapted. And while now it is “state of the art” that everyone is using several tools in a project, it became clear that further development should head towards one tool, which offers all required features.