BIM-Based Construction Waste Minimisation Framework for the Design Stage of a Construction Project: The Case of Sri Lanka

Construction waste has significantly affected the environment and any project’s value for money, which made researchers concerned for a Construction Waste Minimisation (CWM) process. Scholarly works have ascertained that the major proportion of construction waste generated during the decisions taken in the early design stage as of 33% of direct construction waste. On the other hand, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is being widely used in Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry to enhance the building design, cost estimation, and scheduling, where researchers are already speculating on the potential of BIM to enhance the CWM process. Even though many studies have emphasized and accomplished CWM, BIM-based strategies are not significantly practised in Sri Lanka, since it is a new approach towards the Sri Lankan context. Thereby, this research aims to present a BIM-based CWM theoretical framework for the Sri Lankan construction industry. Accordingly, an extensive literature survey was conducted to develop a theoretical framework for the identified causes of waste generation activities with the incorporation of BIM features. Further, this theoretical framework would provide solutions by laying down the procedural layout to achieve foreseeable solutions for the most significant causes of construction waste during the design stage of a construction project.