Early Involvement of the Facility Manager in the BIM process

In the past, Facility Managers have been included in the building planning process in a very limited way, implementing maintenance strategies based on the as-built condition at the time the owner takes possession (Azhar, 2011). Azhar claims that in the future BIM could allow the Facility Manager the opportunity to enter the design stage much earlier, which could lead to them influencing the design and construction, as the model can be used to visualise important information for stakeholders. For this to be a reality the industry will be required to develop acceptable processes and policies that can guide issues of ownership and risk management. This was an area that will require additional R&D from practitioners and researchers in the future.

Gerber et al., (2011) states that if leveraging BIM and FM were to work together then it requires a visionary owner that could lead and guide the process from beginning to end. The authors explain that clients, who wish to adopt the model for FM practice, should have enough resources and time to investigate areas, such as implementation, identify processes and possible benefits and ensure all training was in place. The authors further contend that as BIM models were primarily deliverables of architects, engineers and contractors, that in order to leverage the BIM model during operations and maintenance they should increase the control during design and construction to ensure that the post construction BIM requirements were satisfied. The authors warn that this may result in an upfront additional financial burden for the owners at the early stages of the project and will require continuous updating to remain useful, where the final model has the opportunity to target and reduce future O&M costs.

Coates (2011) further stresses that there were new opportunities for the client to control and develop a more efficient design process for multiple design teams. BIM has the potential to radically change how design and construction is conducted with the majority of cost savings

Ph.D Thesis 57 Barry McAuley and potential benefits existing in the building operation stage. The author adds that if this was to be a reality for the Facility Manager, it may require them needing licenses to use such tools, in order to manipulate the model as seen in the design stage.

Elmualim et al., (2010) emphasise that Facility Managers have a great role to play in advancing the sustainability agenda in the built environment and FM activities have a significant influence over how buildings and facilities were used, and, therefore, were tasked to promote and implement the sustainability policies. This means that the Facility Managers were at the forefront of implementing their organisation’s vision and commitment towards the sustainability agenda. As already explained previously within the literature review, BIM holds the tools to ensure the most sustainable and carbon neutral building was produced. The Facility Manager along with these tools and their invaluable knowledge offer the potential to compute a number of quick simulations, which could possibly significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the building.

Holzer (2012) believes that architects typically assume that their capability to explore in early stage design was constrained by consultants who only want to model and analyse, as few options as possible, resulting in designers becoming suspicious about collaborating through BIM early on. The author comments that parts of the process change through BIM were achieved by making decisions earlier on in the design process, in which designers need to agree how to advance the design and documentation with stronger involvement of other collaborators, such as the engineers, the QS or the contractors. The author adds that it was important to establish a new dialogue and provide decision makers with direct access to the BIM model, even though they may not wish to manipulate the model themselves. Such a decision maker that could prove valuable was the Facility Manager.

Kasprzak and Dubler (2012) voice their concern that end users need to recognise the spend required to exchange information to their existing FM system. The authors warn that the project team must begin with a strong focus on the operational phase of the building and have an understanding of the information that was required to operate the building. This perspective allows project teams to identify the desired downstream uses of data. The Facility Manager was in a unique position to assist in this process. Yee et al., (2012) advocates early involvement of the building manager, as this will help provide an understanding of what data should be modelled. This has seen the GSA get only essential FM data, while meeting budget requirements.

Ph.D Thesis 58 Barry McAuley Wang et al., (2013) advocates early FM involvement by designing a traveling path where FM personnel have to identify the components’ location, getting access to the relevant documents, and finally, the maintenance information. By predesigning the travelling path in the maintenance job, travelling time was reduced and latent hazards could be avoided. Wang et al., were in the process of developing a framework for considering FM in the design stage with BIM. The purpose of such a framework seeks to avoid and reduce the potential issues, such as rework and inappropriate allocation of workspace in the operational phase. The application of such a travelling path demonstrates that the model if partnered with early Facility Manager involvement can address possible key FM concerns that may prove problematic during the operational phase. As the authors research aim was to create a series of KPTs to demonstrate the benefit of including the Facility Manager in the BIM design process, the work performed by Wang et al. (2013) provided an initial understanding that the Facility Manager can assist in the BIM process.

Kelly et al., (2013) highlights a number of procedural and cultural mind-set issues which included that unless BIM for FM benefits were clearly proven, its uptake in the FM industry will continue to be low. Other reasons why BIM for FM was not readily adopted, includes the need for Facility Managers to be involved earlier instead of at a very late phase in the project.

The time for FM to promote their discipline was now more than ever with the tools now been offered within the BIM process (Gannon et al., 2013). The authors claim that building owners were now in a unique position to demand change in the delivery of construction projects. The authors state that the technology was available, the costs have been quantified, and the global economy has forced the AEC sector to look for more economical solutions. The authors warn that like it or not, there was a need to change how one designs, builds and operates a facility.

This attitude has been successful on several pilots within Penn State University and Pegula Ice Arena., where at any time, the designers, construction managers and Facility Managers had access to the latest attribute information and geometric data. As a result, they have developed and implemented information transfer protocols for major building systems, equipment was tagged when it comes on site, and the Facility Managers have asset information immediately.

Liu and Issa (2013) acknowledge that it was hard to get the Facility Manager involved early on in the design phase because the FM team may not have been created, as they were only considered once the operational phase has commenced. Thus acquiring the FM team’s

Ph.D Thesis 59 Barry McAuley general knowledge, such as the data requirements of FM from the BIM database, which does not require the physical presence of the FM staff, can be a solution to this problem. Charlesraj (2014) suggested a knowledge based BIM for FM (K-BIM). He suggests that the development of the core competencies of FM can be facilitated by adopting the best practices of BIM and FM. This will mean that the BIM model will have knowledge driven data/information rather than being information-dependent. The stakeholders involved in this will be primarily Facility Managers and they will interact with the K-BIM for problem-solving or decision making. The Facility Manager in this framework was someone who has a significant amount of knowledge in the core competency areas of FM.

BIM brings Facility Managers closer to project conceptualization and pre-construction stages than they were in tradition processes of project development. BIM enables Facility Managers to optimize their management intelligence in different ways e.g. (1) by co-opting BIM’s robust data across different project development stages; (2) by applying BIM databases to the entire project lifecycle (Olatunji and Akanmu, 2015 pp 110 & 111).

The authors ask the question if modellers and designers have the entire life cycle in mind and, if not, could BIM be assumed to add little value to FM processes. The authors conclude that BIM will only add value to the FM process once modeller or designers were able to share Facility Managers’ values right from the very early stages of project life. Lindquist (2015) adds that involvement of the FM team in the early project stage was challenging, as there was a long time horizon between design and operation of a building. They further add that BIM will offer a new dimension to maintenance, as it will offer a thread between the building’s lifecycle were involving maintenance teams early in building projects was strongly encouraged.

“The supplement of professional inputs from Facility Managers during the conceptual design stage through the BIM concept towards a more efficient FM that will contribute in minimizing the possible waste of project resources (time, money, and materials), enables Facility Managers to obtain access to all of the life-cycle information of the project and offers the essential tools (i.e. monitoring, scheduling and integrating) to keep buildings running up to the required living standard” (Kattan and Jrade, 2015 pp188).

Ph.D Thesis 60 Barry McAuley They have suggested a framework that develops a model that will be used by the design team to integrate existing BIM tools with the data that can be gathered and generated by the owner, architect, and FM at the conceptual design stage of a project towards effective FM.

On reflection of the literature one can summarise that the inclusion of the Facility Manager in the design process was at the discretion of the owner and their budgetary constraints. Further to this the literature ascertains that there was little information available on their decision making directly impacting the efficiency of the model or in improving the FM process. If the Facility Manager was to justify their inclusion, there needs to be an understanding to what they can specifically contribute. While the reviewed literature has highlighted that they can have a significant impact, the key performance areas where they can specifically contribute was not reviewed, with regard to the BIM process. The next section has reviewed the current performance tools and processes in place that have been applied within the BIM process.