Cartwright
Pickard

One year into our 7D BIM research project, we shared the interim findings of this innovative method for estimating the whole life cost of buildings from the earliest stages of design with around 130 people from across the construction industry at an event hosted by New London Architecture.

Peter Murray, Chairman of New London Architecture, welcomed guests to the event which saw guest speaker Richard Saxon CBE discuss the future of the digital built environment and Dr Mariangela Zanni and James Pickard share the interim findings of the research project.

The research indicates that by maximising the resolution and quality of information added to a BIM model through the design for manufacture, construction, commissioning and handover stages of the building’s life-cycle, and then injecting the model with real-world building performance data once the building has been occupied, we will be able to push the industry towards a more intelligent approach to building design and delivery.

This approach will be based on real-world feedback that can be leveraged in a virtual environment, allowing the performance of buildings in-use to rapidly, and from an early stage, inform the design of future projects. Crucially, we believe that 7D BIM will enable us to more accurately predict whole life costs, which will help those commissioning buildings to understand the long-term viability of alternative design proposals.

The ultimate goal is to create a design decision support tool that will enable clients and design teams to make more informed decisions from the earliest stages of design based on the whole life cost of a single building element through to comparing complete built assets with others.