Semantic Enrichment of Non-Graphical Data of a BIM Model of a Public Building from the Perspective of the Facility Manager

Building information modeling (BIM) is undeniably the most important trend in the digitization of the construction sector in recent years. BIM models currently being built are extremely geometrically rich, that is, they are modeled at a high level of detail in terms of geometry. Thanks to object-oriented programming paradigms, BIM models include high-level relationships to ensure interactions between objects, rapid view generation, and documentation. However, these models are not always equally rich in non-graphical data. This is true for parameters at the library object level, with which building object models are saturated, but also at the project, site, building, or floor levels according to the structure of the interoperable industry foundation classes (IFC) format. The current state of knowledge also lacks a clear methodology for inputting such data. For this reason, experimental work was undertaken on semantic enrichment in non-graphical data of a public building (a public kindergarten, Secemin, Poland), which has its BIM model at a high level of geometric detail but is poor in non-graphical data. As a result of the research and development work, all levels of the IFC structure were saturated with non-graphical data and validated, and the possibilities of their use were shown from the perspective of the facility manager. Documentation from the manager was used to achieve this goal, and selected analyses and simulations were performed on the enriched model. This article contributes to the discussion on semantic enrichment from CAD3D to BIM by presenting a detailed process for entering non-graphical data into a BIM model. The presented data entry method can be used by both modelers and facility managers. Thus, this paper fills an important research gap related to semantic enrichment in non-graphical data at different levels of the IFC structure.