A Study on the Development Direction and Priority of the BIM-Based Hospital Design Validation Technology

Hospital design review is challenging because design requirements for hospitals are more complex than other facilities, and many design changes occur due to changes of medical device specifications during a construction period and request from experts in various fields. Building Information Modeling (BIM) has recently been adopted in a hospital design process to improve design quality and reduce design errors. A possibility of automated check of hospital design using BIM has been demonstrated. However, the current use of BIM is too limited to satisfy the needs of practice. The main goals of this study are to survey the needs for the BIM-based hospital design validation technology and to propose the development direction and priority through a survey with experts and professionals in hospital design and construction. As the results, among various hospital-related design codes and guidelines, practitioners perceived that design change orders during a construction process and an overwhelming amount of design requirements were the most important and most repeatedly examined items. When BIM-based design validation was adopted, the central medical department, wards, and the outpatient department were regarded as the most beneficial spaces, clash detection between architectural and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) components as the most beneficial work type, and the design development phase as the most beneficial phase. The development priority and direction of a BIM-based hospital design validation technology found in this study are expected to be used as a blueprint for developing and improving BIM-based hospital design validation systems in the future.