BIM-based Facility Management. Embedded information management for maintenance: Building Information Modelling and database integration for the Italian Public Administration

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a process that allows you to generate, collect and manage all the data about the building throughout its life cycle: design, construction and facility management. Design and construction stages affect only a minor part of the building life in terms of time and cost, compared to the Facility Management (FM). However, the adoption of BIM in the FM stage of a project, with the relative advantages and difficulties, is strikingly less explored in the available literature with respect to the other stages of the project. The main obstacle in the adoption of BIM for the building life cycle is the fear that it does not satisfy the needs of the professional as the traditional method does. Furthermore, a common opinion is that BIM can overturn the way of operating buildings. Finally, the need of training courses is certainly a major hurdle in terms of capacity, money and time to spend. The problems presented are even more obvious when we look at the Public Administration (PA). In fact, in addition to the obstacles described above, the PA must deal with a limited budget and with a large number of professionals with very heterogeneous skills. The aim of the research work is to underline the possibility of BIM and FM integration in the PA and to highlight the main barriers to BIM for FM adoption, the problems with the current practice, and the most considerable benefits of this merging. The analysis of the discussed problem led the research work to the development of a replicable procedure able to implement innovative tools and methods to manage the variety of processes that characterize the built environment, using simple tools that do not disrupt the procedural process of the conventional method, but with the potential of BIM systems. The focus of the research is the integration of BIM with a dynamic database in order to provide a powerful instrument to control the variables of Maintenance Management (MM). The study is carried out on the school building assets of an Italian PA and deals with the results derived from the analysis of 450 case studies. The Research work is developed into two major steps. At first, the conventional methodology used by the PA is examined and data concerning school building maintenance are gathered. Then, in the second phase, the research focuses more in detail on database-BIM integration. This research work presents the results of a theoretical and practical study about BIM and MM integration, as the natural evolution of a methodology that needs to follow innovation and to implement new processes and tools. The research work demonstrates how the PA can combine the main benefits of information storage offered by database applications with the advantages of BIM in terms of visualisation, localisation and immediate awareness in virtual environment.