A Collaborative Unified Computing Platform for Building Information Modelling (BIM)

The current dominant computing mode in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) domain is standalone based, causing fragmentation and fundamental interoperability problems. This makes the collaboration required to deal with the interconnected and complex tasks associated with a sustainable and resilient built environment extremely difficult. This article aims to discuss how the latest computing technologies can be leveraged for the AEC domain and Building Information Modelling (BIM) in particular. These technologies include Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things and Big Data Analytics. The data rich BIM domain will be analysed to identify relevant characteristics, opportunities and the likely challenges. A clear case will be established detailing why BIM needs these technologies and how they can be brought together to bring about a paradigm shift in the industry. Having identified the potential application of new technologies, a future platform will be proposed. It will carry out large scale, real-time processing of data from all stakeholders. The platform will facilitate the collaborative interpretation, manipulation and analysis of data for the whole lifecycle of building projects. It will be flexible, intelligent and able to autonomously execute analysis and choose the relevant tools. This will form a base for a step-change for computing tools in the AEC domain.