A BIM-WMS integrated decision support tool for supply chain management in construction

Selection of construction material sources is an important issue in construction supply chain management. This affects not only the shipping cost and schedule of a construction project, but also its environmental impact. However, material delivery cost and time from the source location to the job site concerning sustainability may not be easily estimated. In this paper, a decision support tool that integrates building information modeling (BIM) and web map service (WMS) for the source selection of sustainable construction materials is presented. The BIM-WMS integrated decision support tool is developed in a form of a BIM-integrated plugin, which can help select sustainable construction material sources through evaluating the final cost and delivery time of the material, as well as calculate location-related credits in some green building standards, such as LEED. The developed plugin will make the selection of sustainable construction material and the calculation of location-related credits in green building certification an easy task, with the goal of minimizing environmental impact.