Factors Motivating the Adoption of BIM-based Sustainability Analysis

The delivery of sustainable and green certified buildings such as BREEAM and LEED is a highly-discussed topic with significant interest growth between the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. At the same time, professionals in the AEC have started to recognize the importance of the synergy between Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the assessment of green building strategies to the construction industry. Several studies demonstrated BIM as a platform for collaboration in the AEC sector in general, rather than to deliver green buildings. Thus fewer researchers have tended to investigate the external and internal problems/factors that affects the delivery of green buildings, and role of digital tools and BIM based strategy in solving them. Through thematic coding of existing literature, this paper formulates a critical review of the key drivers for the change needed in AEC industry. It maps knowledge, makes recommendations for improved collaboration, and offers general insight into the delivery of green building design. This review will act as a base to address the critical factors affecting the delivery of green buildings, and investigate how integrating BIM with sustainability aspects could overcome workflow problems towards better collaboration. The investigation concluded that the practice adoption to BIM-based applications is affected by the immature level of integration and lack of consistent framework that is based on the problems in the workflow, process and gap in communication strategies captured from the field work.