Integrating Building Information Modeling and Life Cycle Assessment Tools to Design Sustainable Buildings

When it comes to the Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) industry related software, one area of potential development that appears very promising is the integration of Life-cycle Assessment (LCA) tools with Building Information Modeling (BIM) models. However, performing an LCA on whole buildings is an exhaustive task due to the manual and repetitive nature of extracting building parameters from BIM models and inputting them into LCA tools. Moreover, the inaccessibility and complexity of LCA tools is another reason why such exercise is avoided by building professionals. In this paper, the literature regarding LCA, BIM, and data exchange standards that could facilitate integrating them is reviewed. A prototype is developed and validated where a level 2 LCA tool (Athena EcoCalculator) is linked to a BIM model (Autodesk Revit) to perform an LCA on a simple 3D object-oriented model using Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) as the data exchange standard.