Developing a framework to revolutionise the 4D BIM process: IPD-based solution

Purpose: The integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is highly recommended for better project delivery. Although there is a methodology for this integration, however, the BIM requires some improvements to foster the adoption of IPD. This paper presents an innovative way to support the 4D BIM automation/optimisation within the IPD approach. Similar to structural, architectural designs libraries, this research proposes a planning library to enable automating the formulation of schedule, as well as, embedding the multi-objective optimisation into the 4D BIM.

Design/methodology/approach: The literature review was utilised to highlight the existing improvement of using 4D BIM, as well as, the multi-objective schedule optimisation. Moreover, using a case study in order to validate the developed framework and measure its applicability.

Findings: The results show that there is a cost saving of 22.86% due to using the proposed automated multi-objective optimisation. The case study shows the significance of integrating Activity Based Costing (ABC) into 4D BIM in order to configure the hierarchy level of overhead activities with IPD approach, therefore, the most level of contribution in managing the IPD project was by the trade package level by 33.33% and the minimal contribution was around 8.33% by the project level.

Originality/value : This research presents a new philosophy to develop the 4D BIM model—Planning and scheduling—A BIM library of the project activities is developed to enable the automation of the creation of the project schedule with respect to the 3D BIM design sequence. The optimisation of the project duration is considered to be automated within the creation process using the proposed genetic algorithm model.