Two design patterns for facilitating Building Information Model-based synchronous collaboration

Abstract

The traditional fragmented nature of the construction industry along with the ad hoc matter in which
investments in ICT have been made has resulted in a key cause of the poor performance and inefficiencies of
the industry being attributed to the communication and exchange of information. The concept of Building
Information Modelling (BIM) emerged to address the seamless exchange of information throughout the life
of a facility following early modelling efforts focused on providing a solution to data exchange problems
between several CAD and analysis systems. On the other hand, ICT supported collaborative teamwork has
been an important aspect of building lifecycle management over the years in order to address the problems
related to the fragmented nature of the industry. In parallel, recent studies in the field have demonstrated
that BIMs will play an important role in facilitating collaboration. Most of the studies related to collaborative
computing in construction have focused on facilitating the coordination and communication aspects of
collaboration. In contrast, this paper proposes a system level and BIM-based approach for facilitating
collaboration through the entire lifecycle of the building. In this context, the paper presents two design
patterns that can be used as a foundation in formulating the design of information systems for BIM-based
synchronous collaboration. The proposed patterns will help the system analysts/designers to focus on a
system level picture when tackling recurring problems in the design of collaborative environments.
Following a brief summary on the history of information modelling in the construction industry, this paper
reviews the storage and exchange mechanisms of BIMs and then proposes two design patterns as a means to
facilitating model-based synchronous collaboration.
© 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.