Integration of Cost and Schedule Using BIM

The integration of cost and schedule control systems has been an issue of great concern for researchers and practitioners in the construction industry. Nevertheless, the real-world implementations of breakdown structures for cost and schedule are at different levels of detail, which makes the integration of cost and schedule control data quite complex. Building information modeling (BIM), in both four- and five-dimensional (5D) forms, has recently attained widespread attention in the architectural, engineering, and construction industries. Although current 5D models link cost items and schedule activities to BIM elements, it is still necessary to link and integrate cost and schedule data manually. This paper proposes a model to link cost and schedule data automatically following their linkage to BIM elements. First, the relationship between schedule activities, BIM elements, and cost items is analyzed. Then the concept is analyzed with an object-oriented paradigm. Finally, the system is implemented using MS Visual C#.