The role of BIM in the sustainability in the AEC sector

Abstract

The implementation of the ambitious environmental targets set by the Paris Agreement of 2015 will demand an enormous transformation in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. In order to the participating countries to become carbon-neutral by 2050, new sustainable strategies have to be promoted in the building sector, since “buildings and construction in the EU account for 50% of all extracted materials, 30% of water consumption and 33% of total generated waste”, according to MORAN et al. (2020). To address the problems in the building sector, the EU is promoting new sustainable policies and it developed the Waste Framework Directive (WFD) in 2008 and enacted the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) in 2010, with supportive measures for the ‘decarbonisation’ of the building stock. The EPBD triggered the development of new concepts such as Nearly Zero-Energy Building (NZEB), technical solutions, more efficient materials and assessment tools, namely Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). With buildings becoming more energy-efficient, and with the effort from the governments to invest in cleaner energy sources, new obstacles have emerged in the building sector. With buildings becoming more energy-efficient and producing surplus energy, the idea of turning them as sources connected to the neighbourhood area is quite challenging. With the growing emphasis in the planning phase, there is an opportunity for technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) to excel with their performance. This paper will focus on how BIM could help AEC stakeholders in the assessment of the sustainability performance of the proposal, at the production and end-of-life phases, since it has shown reliable results to the achievement of more sustainable practices.