Mobilising theory and practice for the enhancement of building information modelling based building sustainability assessment: An exploratory study and a conceptual framework

The adoption of Building Sustainability Assessment (BSA) systems is becoming a growing trend, but it has been criticised for being inconsistent and resource-consuming. Recent development of Building Information Modelling (BIM) could help facilitate the BSA process. There has been useful research conducted in this area but there has been limited focus on the practitioner’s perspective. This paper fills that gap by exploring the practitioners outlook on the subject. The main aim is to develop a conceptual framework that compiles the wisdom of both theory and practice. Two-step method was adopted; a survey targeting different practitioners, followed by semi-structured interviews with selected experts. Lack of knowledge and data exchange limitations were ranked highest among the survey respondents, while the level of information (LOI) and BIM libraries attracted more attention by the experts. Additionally, new challenges were introduced and new research areas to promote the development of BIM-based BSA were uncovered.