Madhani, Himanshu 1986- (2012-11). Assessing the Potential of Developing a Tool for Residential Facility Management Using Building Information Modeling Software. Master's Thesis.
Thesis
Building Information Modeling (BIM) has changed the ways buildings are designed and constructed. Along with design and construction, operation and maintenance of the built facility is also gaining importance in the Architecture-Engineering-Construction industry. Facility management (FM) is widely adopted by industrial, healthcare and other types of commercial facilities for better maintenance and management of assets. BIM is being adopted in the field of Facility management and has become one of the most important tools for better application of operation and maintenance. Facility management is performed by professionals with training and experience in the related fields of building operation, maintenance, upgrade and repair. BIM is a professional tool which requires intense training and knowledge. This tool cannot be used and is hard to understand for non-professionals and people who do not have training to use it. Management of residences is as important as management of commercial, industrial and healthcare facilities for the life and smooth running of such facilities. Residential facilities are properties with one or more residential units or buildings. These buildings could be low rise, high rise or individual units. This thesis will help in analyzing the scope of using BIM and Application Programming Interface (API) for management of maintenance in residences by the owner who are not professionally trained. The research analyzes a single, basic function of a BIM tool to determine the potential for such a tool to help non-expert, first time user to be able to understand their residential facilities maintenance requirements. It is an attempt to propose a system which provides alerts to the owners regarding required maintenance and which shows the location of the work in a 3D model. The system was designed and tested in Microsoft Windows 7 operating system by using Autodesk(R) Revit building information software to make the 3D model, a Revit API plug-in to craft the alerts and show the location of work and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) to export the model to a web browser. The system worked through Revit program, but the concept of applying the system to work through web browser failed.
