Leveraging Cloud-BIM for LEED Automation

SUMMARY: Synergies between building information modelling (BIM) and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) have been recognized early on, since the industry started embracing BIM. However, current practices of implementing BIM in LEED projects remain ad hoc, resulting in job-specific success difficult to replicate. As both BIM technology and LEED systems are making continuous improvement, it has become overwhelming for project teams to work out an optimal strategy to exploit their technology and management strength in LEED project delivery. This paper looks at a rising trend in recent BIM development, which is the cloud-deployed BIM server (cloud-BIM) technology, and proposes a new business paradigm so project teams can leverage cloud-BIM to achieve LEED Automation. The new paradigm overcomes the limitation in capacity and communication of conventional desktop computing and stand-alone BIM. It empowers the project team with scalable and concurrent collaboration that was essential to delivery high performance sustainable projects such as LEED projects. A framework that integrated strengths of cloud-BIM, various LEED dedicated SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions and open information exchange protocols is created to delineate possible implementation strategies for this new paradigm.