Green Construction Products into BIM

Project facts

Project promoter:
coBuilder Bulgaria Ltd.
Project Number:
BG10-0033
Target groups
Entrepreneurs
Status:
Completed
Initial project cost:
€497,138
Final project cost:
€457,910
From Norway Grants:
€ 204,600
The project is carried out in:
Bulgaria

More information

Description

The main objective of our proposed project “Green Construction products into BIM” is to create a system for the architects and designers, materials and components suppliers, wholesalers, contractors, sub-contractors and building owners for selecting environmental friendly products, elements and assemblies used in their construction projects. The company is using the new standards within Building Information Models (BIM) such as IFC, bSDD and IDM, and have implemented these standards in our processes of collecting product data. As a result all actors in the construction industry will be able to exchange information easily: suppliers to provide information on their green products, architects and contractors to use this products and clients to have greener buildings that comply to various standards and requirements. This will have a major impact for the Bulgarian construction industry as well as for the construction industry in Europe, strengthening the sustainability in the sector. The new green product data base created in the new proposed tool will be disseminated through the existing European information system called ProductX change as a new service tool, supported by European Associations in the construction industry. As a result of the project, coBuilder Bulgaria Ltd will act as an information hub for supplying green product data, serving construction projects Europe wide, leading the way in increasing the efficiency, and greening the industry.

Summary of project results

The "Green Construction Products into BIM" project is oriented towards the use of BIM for a greener and more sustainable construction industry. Often times green construction projects suffer from lack of transparency in all communications between the involved parties. This leads to cases in which due to lack of cooperation contractors select and use cheaper products with inferior environmental properties instead of the green products previously specified within the design stage. The main objective of the "Green Construction Products into BIM" project is developing software solutions that enable the selection of environmentally friendly products based on their environmental properties or characteristics. The functionalities that coBuilder develops will help all actors within the construction supply chain take advantage of the technical specifications and environmental properties of each product in a digital format, thus helping the selection process and ensuring that what is specified actually gets built. Furthermore, coBuilder Bulgaria’s project will facilitate the integration of these data into BIM in order to track the movement of all products from design to operation. coBuilder’s project completion has a major impact on the Bulgarian and European construction industry, strengthening the sustainability in the sector. This will be achieved through: • Development of BIM-enabled functionalities/tools for searching and selecting „green“ products in order to meet environmental requirements and to contribute to a more sustainable construction; • Development of a „green“ database with product data characteristics based on harmonised technical specifications and environmental requirements such as CPR, LVL, MD and REACH; • Establishment of a European knowledge centre for identifying relevant legislation and market-specific requirements and sharing/exchanging expertise with companies and professionals.

Summary of bilateral results

Catenda AS is the leading supplier of cloud based open BIM platforms. Catenda AS is member of buildingSMART, and the only company involved in all buildingSMART standard developments, they possess unique knowledge in open BIM. The main achievement from the cooperation with Catenda AS was for us to find a way of transforming product data into the BIM-model. Their role in the project was to take active part in tasks concerning the technical specifications of construction product types, and standardized when using bSDD to openBIM. During the project implementation coBuilder in cooperation with Catenda AS developed “open BIM product templates” for the manufacturers, using bSDD as the platform for translations and transnational availability of product data. With the created product templates and implemented COBie sets and IFC4 mappings into bSDD, coBuilder is now capable of performing information exchange between building models in different softwares. This stimulates the use of green materials in the construction and design process due to legislative and environmental market requirements. Using the implementations performed in bSDD by the project, the industry will avoid the loss of data and transfer material data interruptedly.