Case-based reasoning and BIM systems for asset management

Purpose – The next generation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) seeks to establish the concept of Building Knowledge Modelling (BKM). The current BIM applications in construction, including those for asset management, have been mainly used to ensure consistent information exchange among the stakeholders. However, BKM needs to utilise knowledge management (KM) techniques into building models to advance the use of these systems. The purpose of this paper is to develop an integrated system to capture, retrieve, and manage information/knowledge for one of the key operations of asset management: building maintenance (BM). Design/methodology/approach – The proposed system consists of two modules; BIM module to capture relevant information and case-based reasoning (CBR) module to capture the operational knowledge of maintenance activities. The structure of the CBR module was based on analysis of a number of interviews and case studies conducted with professionals working in public BM departments. This paper discusses the development of the CBR module and its integration with the BIM module. The case retaining function of the developed system identifies the information/knowledge relevant to maintenance cases and pursues the related affected building elements by these cases. Findings – The paper concludes that CBR as a tool for KM can improve the performance of BIM models. Originality/value – As the research in BKM is still relatively immature, this research takes an advanced step by incorporating the intelligent functions of knowledge systems into BIM-based systems which helps the transformation from the conventional BIM to BKM.