Towards a Parsimonious Information Management for Energy Retrofitting of Buildings

Throughout the world there are thousands of residential and public buildings that have been built during the reconstruction and rapid urbanization after the 2 world war, particularly Eastern and Central Europe as well as in China. These are the most efficient target for mass improvement of their energy use through the improvements of façade insulation and windows. Advanced information technology (IT) including building information modelling technology (BIM) is not used very often in these renovations. Our hypothesis is that the use of BIM could be more efficient if it would focus on the essential information needs of the actors involved. The key idea of BIM structured collaborative shared database of all required information should be preserved but the model should be parsimonious. The paper presents the ongoing research in the context of a bilateral Chinese-Slovenian project with the goal of designing parsimonious information management for the retrofitting of existing buildings. The broader goal of the work is to study information modelling supporting works where a complete information model may not be needed at all and where a detail process definition as outlined in BIM execution plan and related documents would lead to overspecification, constraining the workflow. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Budapest University of Technology and Economics & Diamond Congress Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2019.