Do Building Information Modelling Applications Benefit Design Teams in Achieving BREEAM Accreditation?

Abstract

Using building information modelling (BIM) within a design team allows for integration of sustainability analysis such as daylighting analysis, water harvesting, and thermal assessment whilst capturing the data which can be used for BREEAM assessment. Therefore, the availability of data compared to traditional methods can be used to design teams, stakeholders, and environmental assessment bodies’ advantage. Since BIM boasts extensive building performance analysis capabilities, design teams should be provided with standard methodologies and guidance into successfully achieving certain BREEAM criteria. This paper highlights gaps in the existing theory to develop a solid understanding for further research in order to achieve BIM integrated BREEAM design team protocol. Further to this and running parallel to the protocol and guidance, an internal conceptual framework existing within BIM software could be instigated from future research. This will require detailed and innovative solutions to link the credits with the software both from an IT and from a software coding perspective; also, there is great merit into analysing design teams’ cultural and behavioural factors towards sustainable design through the BIM model.