Essay on Building Information Modelling

1. Brief introduction of the topic
1.1. Definition
According to the Wikipedia (2014), Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a process of digitally represent the physical and functional characteristics of an infrastructure during its life-cycle, as a reliable basis for making decisions based on the cooperation between different stakeholders in exchanging the knowledge at different stages of the life-cycle of the infrastructure.

1.2. Background
As a type of advanced construction tool, BIM plays a significant role in the Green Building construction and has a series of advantages compared with traditional 2D methods. Because of the distinguished features of reducing cost, time, errors and risks by estimating cost and simulating the process in plan, design, operation and management, it becomes increasingly popular worldwide. Now, BIM has been developed in the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Norway, India, Singapore, South Korea, Iran and Hong Kong, etc (Wikipedia, 2014). Besides, it is continuously rapidly developing. Now the 6D BIM, containing cost, time, and all phases in life-cycle facilities management, is the latest development; however, 6D BIM’s case of application is rare and 4D and 5D BIM are more widely implemented.

1.3. History
According to the description in Wikipedia (2014) and of Bergin (2012, cited in Quirk 2014, the history of BIM can be divided into three stages, namely budding stage, commence stage and rapidly developing stage. Although BIM becomes popular in recent years, the concept of BIM dates back to the earliest days of computing. Englebart illustrates his imagination of the future architect as object based design, parametric manipulation and a relational database showing the work and structure in the screen. That is the bud of BIM. Several years later, constructive solid geometry and boundary representation appeared as the method to display and record construction shape, which realised visualization of the model. The term Building Information Model was put forward by Nederveen and Tolman. Around 1975, Eastman successfully promoted BIM into Database Building Design phase by creating the first building database. However, the popularity of BIM did not happen until Autodesk released the white paper entitled ‘Building Information Modelling’ in 1992. During this period, the first Virtual Building implementation was completed in 1987. After these, BIM began to develop rapidly and achieved Collaborative Architecture via developing International Foundation Class (IFC).

1.4. Scale of applications
BIM has satisfying compatibility and adaptability to be used in constructions of buildings, bridges, roads, water utilities, wastewater utilities, electricity utilities, and gas utilities, etc. (Wikipedia, 2014) Apart from this, it performs well to work with some other tools (such as AutoCAD and VectorWorks) in packages like Autodesk Revit and ArchiCAD and it can be developed by adding some local architectural drafting tools in to the framework to form a new localised software package in order to satisfy the specific requirements of local users. Moreover, BIM can be used in almost all construction projects, regardless the scale of the project. In ultra-large-scale projects, BIM can enlarge its capacity of calculation though digital platform, like Revit.

2. Review of the state-of-the-art in research and/or applications
In Australia, 5D BIM is prompted by the government because of the lower cost and profitable operation. 5D BIM introduces time and cost as a fourth dimension and a fifth dimension respectively, based on the 3D modelling, which makes all layouts, shapes of construction, flow simulating, cost estimation, management planning and error modification corresponding to each phase in life-cycle of construction visible. The workflow of BIM usually follows the sequence as Figure 1. By using BIM, both the capital cost and environmental cost would be considered and

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