Building Life Cycle Assessment with BIM Whole Building Modeling

Dirk von Below, Flad Architects
Luke Laverty, Flad Architects

BIM is providing new tools for evaluating a building design in real time. Although we are still at an early stage and new software is appearing all the time we can now compare multiple paths to whole building simulation and assess their usefulness.

Flad will present a LEED project that will apply the new pilot credit PC 63 for Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment. This new credit challenges the construction community to use innovative software and new product databases to measure the buildings energy use and environmental footprint based on the material selected to construct the building.

These simulations are only useful if they can begin to influence the design choices made in the early stages of project development. Before the arrival of BIM tools it was prohibitively slow and expensive to track quantities and qualities of construction materials. Now that buildings are modeled with real volumes of construction materials in three dimensions it is possible to review the environmental impact of multiple building designs starting from early concept design stages.

Not only can we model the real day lighting impact and building orientation on the building model. The quantity of construction materials can be extracted which allows the team to calculate recycled contents, embodied energy, and quantities of environmental hazards that are related to the extraction, manufacturing, installation and final demolition of construction materials.

The presentation will cover the methodologies used in the process. Teams have to use programs like Revit, Green Building Studio, Project Athena, and Tally to analyze the building design. These programs rely on new substantial databases and international ISO standards to document the material and building qualities. The audience will learn about the state of information that is available in these databases and what type of information is still missing from the industry. We will discuss the limitations of the available techniques and compare different design strategies that evolve from the simulations.

The assessment of the life cycle costs of buildings through simulation of the entire design comes ever closer to the holistic evaluation of our designs we aspire to. It will open our eyes towards the true long term impact that our buildings have and provide tools to manage long term costs and the environment. We will show that the cost of reducing pollution and waste aligns with cost effective choices of construction materials.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand carbon tracking methods
  • Evaluate the extend of modeling and simulations of the environmental footprint of materials and the software and product data available today
  • Learn strategies to optimize the environmental impact of buildings in design and construction

Biography:

Mr. von Below has 25 years of comprehensive architectural experience delivering science buildings to private and institutional clients. He has managed large projects that balance state-of-the-art design, efficiency, and environmental design within a tight financial framework. Mr. von Below's experience includes cost estimates, planning, and quality assurance. He has worked for international clients on projects that were managed in German and English.

An integral part of Flad's S&T team, Luke Laverty takes every opportunity to exploit technology, pushing the built environment for both occupant and sustainability performance. His project experience ranges from a 6,000-SF fully-automated high-throughput microfluidics addition to a 450,000-SF multi-disciplinary research complex in Qatar. His award-winning theoretical work was recently featured in the 2013 AIA Center for Emerging Professionals Annual Exhibition. Mr. Laverty holds a BS degree in Architectural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Master of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati.

 

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