Impact of Digitalization in Construction: Enriching As-built Facilities and Operations using BIM

Abstract

3D Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) technology has achieved massive acceptance to produce and visualise the 3D point clouds of existing facilities in the Architectural, Engineering and construction (AEC) industry. In addition, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is also well recognised to digitalise every component of actual buildings. Integration of TLS and BIM has been established as a disruptive technology to increase the quality and performance of the construction industry. Apart from all these recognised contributions of using the technologies, significant flaws in creating 3D BIM models of existing facilities must be addressed to improve the functionalities and operations in the facility management system. It is worth mentioning that the effective geometric modelling and semantic-rich object recognitions of existing construction buildings (behind the concrete wall) and point cloud overlapping are challenging issues in laser scanning technologies that ultimately lead to incomplete BIM models of as-built facilities. In this study, the contribution to the knowledge gap is represented by considering the two real case studies of existing facilities to optimise facility management and operations in the construction industry. Nevertheless, the main focus of this research is to introduce the current challenges in generating an effective 3D BIM model for the existing buildings satisfying the specified specifications and standards. Further research should consider the issues and more robust and effective evaluation procedures for the larger-scale real case containing more complex and hidden objects.