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1. Introduction
In the life-cycle of construction projects, there are many actors that are involved who need to share information. The management of this information in the life-cycle is often inefficient and error prone. Through the different phases, information gets lost, is misinterpreted, copied to other formats and structures, stored in different locations and comes with an implicit structure or no structure at all.
The information and knowledge exchange between life-cycle phases is limited and mainly based on the exchange of documents and 2D drawings (Adriaanse, 2014). Usually there is a lack of data exchange between the contractor and Asset Management Department of the client despite the wealth of intelligent information which is available for each phase of the project. This is especially prominent during the installation (construction) phase which is also often the longest phase in the project (Papadonikolaki et al., 2015).
This poor information exchange and communication is a cause of failure cost in the Dutch construction industry (USP, 2010). The current added value of building information modeling (BIM) in the operations stage is marginal due to a lack of alignment between the supply of and demand for information and the context-dependent role of information (Bosch et al., 2014). Usually there is a lack of data exchange between contractor and Asset Management Department of clients (Papadonikolaki et al., 2015). Within the UK construction sector, BIM is still rarely used for facilities management although there is a strong desire for collaborative working (Eadie, 2014).
A better information management during the life-cycle of construction projects is key to reduce failure costs and to improve overall project results.
This paper describes the use of BIM for the purpose of information management in the life-cycle. The challenges for improvement are explained and a BIM-based approach based on current best practice in the Netherlands in an attempt to overcome these challenges is presented. A practical case is described in which this approach was applied by the authors. Next, this approach is discussed and recommendations are provided.
2. Fragmented information
The construction industry is fragmented in three ways (Adriaanse, 2014). The first is the fragmentation in phases in the life-cycle of construction projects, generally recognized phases are: initiation, design, construction and the operation and maintenance phase....