Investigation of leveraging BIM information exchange standards for conducting LOD-based cost estimating

Building information modeling (BIM) is a digital information management system that can facilitate workflows and delivery of information in facility projects. Cost estimating is one of the uses of BIM that has the potential to reduce considerably the time and cost required for estimating construction cost of a building project. In this use, type of materials along with their quantities and properties are extracted from building information models and mapped to a cost estimating database in order to estimate the cost. However, interoperability issues currently exist in the industry for the exchange of information from BIM authoring software to cost estimation tools impedes reaching to the full potential efficiency in this use. This paper identifies common information exchange workflows between BIM authoring and cost estimating tools and discusses their advantages and issues. It continues with studying potentials in leveraging open information modeling standards for addressing the identified shortcomings in the workflows. Next, a level of development (LOD)-based cost estimating framework is proposed that uses open information modeling standards for addressing inefficiencies in different detail levels of cost estimating approaches commonly being practiced in the industry. This framework facilitates automated digital information exchanges in the process of using BIM for cost estimating and promotes the implementation of BIM-based cost estimating from early stages of projects.