BIM-based energy consumption assessment of the on-site construction of building structural systems

Purpose: Steel and reinforced concrete are among the most common structural materials used in the construction industry. Cost and the speed of construction have been usually the main criteria when selecting a building’s structural system, whereby the environmental impact of the structural material is sometimes ignored. Availability of an easy-to-use tool for environmental assessment of the structural alternatives could encourage this evaluation in the decision making. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an automated tool for the environmental assessment of the on-site construction processes of a building structural system, which calculates the energy consumption and carbon emissions of the structural system as a parameter for comparison. Design/methodology/approach: This assessment tool is implemented using a building information modeling (BIM) platform to extract structural elements and their key attributes, such as type, geometrical and locational data. These data are processed together with a productivity database to calculate machine hours, and then predefined energy and carbon inventories are used to assess the energy consumption of the structural system in the erection/installation stage. Findings: This assessment tool provides an automated and easy-to-use approach to estimate energy consumption and carbon emissions of different structural systems that are modeled in a BIM platform. The results of this tool were within the ranges reported by the available studies. Originality/value: This research project presents a novel approach to use BIM-based attributes of the structural elements to calculate the required efforts, i.e. machine hours, and assess their energy consumption and carbon emissions during construction processes.