Analyzing BIM Interoperability for LCA Purposes

The use of building information modelling (BIM) is increasingly popular and results in the BIM model becoming the central data source in a construction project. The information available in BIM is hard to use because it lacks interoperability. This paper assesses every strategy to share data from BIM in order to support a life cycle assessment (LCA) for a whole building at every step of the BIM model design. Every open file format concerning the BIM is analyzed to determine if one file format can fulfill the data requirements of an LCA. Among all of these file formats, IFC is the best-known and most detailed format. An in-depth analysis of the IFC data schema and syntax is performed to determine whether the construction industry requires a specific file format for LCA purposes or whether one of the existing open file formats can be used as a data source. © 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.