Product-Oriented Information Delivery Framework for Multistory Modular Building Projects

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-1-2017

Abstract

During the past decade, building information modeling (BIM) has significantly influenced the construction industry. However, none of the available BIM tools and frameworks focuses on modular construction as an industrialized type of construction; thereby, implementation of BIM in these projects is relatively more challenging compared to site-built constructions. In this paper, an information delivery framework is presented for multistory modular buildings that can address both the project-based and product-based nature of these buildings. To develop such a framework, an extension to an already-existing information delivery manual development methodology is proposed in this paper. The extension makes it possible to capture the hierarchy of the building components, which is an important characteristic of modular buildings as manufactured products. This is done by integrating a new component known as a product architecture model (PAM) with other components of the framework in order to capture the information related to industrialized product-based nature of these buildings. This paper reports the extended methodology and frameworks developed using this methodology for multistory modular buildings. The resulting framework is validated by considering a typical modular building project in the United States and comparing its information flow with the framework. The paper also discusses additional potential contributions of the work such as outlining a baseline to extend the industry foundation classes (IFC) data schema and enable it to model specific elements of modular buildings.

Publication Title

Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering

Volume

31

Issue

4

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1061/(ASCE)CP.1943-5487.0000649

ISSN

08873801

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