Using BIM To Follow Up Milestones In A Project Plan During The Design Phase

Abstract

Traditionally, progress in construction projects is done by manually reporting status on activities in a project plan, very often based on subjective evaluation. This increases the possibility to report different status than actual progress, especially in large and multidisciplinary construction projects with high complexity. Could the project plan be related to a building information model (BIM) and could project progress reported directly from the BIM lead to a more accurate, consistent and coordinated status? This paper assesses how object status in the BIM can be related to milestones in a project plan. Findings are based on experiences from the oil and gas industry. Data is gathered from case projects in Kvaerner, a Norwegian EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contractor. The paper examines how a project plan can be connected to a BIM, focusing on the benefits and possibilities of adding status to objects in the BIM and how project progress can be reported and visualized using BIM. Research shows that project progress can be extracted directly from the BIM by introducing control objects, where objects in the BIM are assigned statuses that measures grade of completeness. Checklists are connected to control objects and define criteria that must be fulfilled to reach a correct quality level. Control objects are connected to activities and dated in the project plan. Status on activities can then be obtained and related to milestones, to see if the project is on schedule. By defining control objects in the BIM and adding quality levels that measure status related to milestones, the control objects can be connected to activities in the project plan. Status on each activity related to each milestone can be obtained directly from the BIM. Instead of manual reporting, progress towards milestones in the project plan can be reported directly from the BIM.