Building information modelling, a tool for green built environment

To create any green built environment, it is of primary importance that project stakeholders including designer, energy modeller, estimator, climatologist, environmentalist, etc. contribute and become accountable towards the same. Building information modelling (BIM) is one such tool which not only stands as a 3D geometric modelling tool, but also supplies useful information, data about several aspects throughout the life-cycle of a project such as construction process, design and development of a facility, quantities and scheduling, fabrication process, and provides information required for facilities managers, stakeholders. Hence BIM based approach could also be extended for designing and developing green built environment. This piece of research explores role of building information modelling methodology in the development of green built environment. A BIM based approach assists professionals during the conception of green built environment in predicting the outcome(s) of its construction to minimise its impact on the environment throughout its life-cycle. A building model developed on the principles of BIM virtual representation of building can be presented to person/expert from non-construction/architectural background. It can provide appropriate data on demand to perform energy analysis and hence facilitates very complex and so call tedious process of sustainable design, such as day-lighting, morphological analysis, computational fluidic dynamics (CFD), material takeoff, estimation, scheduling, energy modelling, resource planning, and so on.