Sustainable building production adopting an optimized BIM phasing system

Sustainable building production could be achieved through better economic efficiency, reduced site waste, and a safe working environment. The identification of the creation phase for each element in the building information model (BIM) is manually done by experienced engineers able to integrate technical construction constraints and an appropriate workflow of construction activities. It is a difficult and complex task to be done. Experienced engineers iterate this operation several times until an adequate solution is achieved without real possibility of optimization. The development of an assistance tool to optimize phase identification of BIM elements included in the repetitive floor plan considering varied evaluation criteria and technical construction constraints should lead to significant economic and environmental profits: reduction of needed construction resources and related waste, improvement of construction quality, and better conditions of site safety. The optimization tool presented in this paper provides better solutions for repetitive floor plans specifically through balanced quantities of work hours and a lower quantity of needed formworks. A reduction of around 10% of labour and 25% of non-used formwork is achieved, which significantly improves site safety, productivity, and profitability. The validity of the presented results is substantiated by multiple examples from real construction sites that have been analyzed in this study.