BIM-Based Life Cycle Assessment and Costing of Buildings: Current Trends and Opportunities

The integration of life cycle assessment (LCA), and life cycle costing (LCC) of buildings into building information modelling (BIM) has been a trending research area in construction management. The current practice has involved the combined use of BIM tools (such as Autodesk Revit, and Navisworks) for 3D building modelling, building energy modelling (BEM) tools (such as EnergyPlus and DOE-2), and environmental impact assessment (EIA) tools (such as Athena Eco-calculator, Tally and SimaPro, etc.) to conduct LCA of buildings. One of the major limitations observed in this approach is the interoperability (data loss) issues, as well as the complexity arising from employing many tools especially at the early building design stage. This paper is a critique of conventional BIM-integrated LCA of buildings. It proposes a real-time BIM-integrated LCA/LCC that allows the designer to get immediate feedback (on energy, carbon, LCC, and exergy) at key stages of the design process. It concludes that an improved approach is needed for BIM-integrated LCA/LCC adoption at the early design stage, which is when most of the sustainability decisions are made.