Green BIM – Green building infrastructure as part of BIM-based planning and maintenance

Building greenery, as well as innovative large-scale horizontal greening projects, are increasingly used in our cities and increase the well-being of people in their direct living and working environment. Highly technical façade and roof greening projects, in particular, require integrated, well-thought-out planning, which apart from execution and installation also includes operation and maintenance.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is increasingly becoming the standard in (general planning) offices. In landscape architecture, however, a broad implementation is still lacking.

In the research project “Green BIM”, the criteria for BIM-based planning over the entire life cycle (planning, implementation, care and maintenance) are developed on the basis of a comprehensive status quo analysis of existing structures, installations and building greenery.

The aim is to merge the greening and BIM planning for frictionless implementation and maintenance. These results are relevant for all organisations, technology providers, authorities and offices, energy/building consultants, planners, building technicians and facility managers involved in building and greening planning/maintenance.

On the basis of selected case studies, it will be determined how greenery in buildings is modelled in BIM and how existing greenery systems can be digitalised and integrated in BIM. By analysing the case studies, it will be examined to what extent typical planning steps for building greenery can be processed with industry-typical software products in a BIM-compatible manner.

As a final result of this research project, additions to the international standard for open BIM data structures in civil engineering (IFC / ISO 16739) should be achieved.