Is going Green with BIM really helping Construction Industry to Survive?

Overview

Green Building or Green Construction is a method of using resources to create extraordinary, wholesome and energy-efficient buildings.

Green Building is becoming an emerging need in the construction industry as there are many challenges such as global warming, increased pollution, climatic changes, and depletion of energy resources. Buildings should not be evolving around Green but to sustainability in today’s era.

6D BIM can help AEC Industry to understand the challenges and boosts the sustainability of designing a model that stores intelligent data that can be used to calculate energy and simulations as analysis to acquire energy-efficient design to be proficient in designing solutions.

With the help of BIM, we can get prior information about the expected energy consumption of a building such as lighting fixtures, anticipating hot spots of the building and load analysis, etc.

Green Buildings is how to make the building eco-friendly and durable for a long time. This can be attained by the use of apt materials, reducing wastage and reducing the use of conventional resources to capitulate a safer zone for inhabitants.

Many healthy habits such as rainwater harvesting, and the use of automated sensors to help lighting and edifices are sustainable. For this many rating systems across the globe help the construction industry to achieve the tag of Green Buildings.

Growth of Green Buildings

U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is now part of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. LEED Certification is advised by many federal, state and local agencies for sustainable design, and optimized use of resources such as energy, water, and materials.

The stages of Certification are summarized below:

Planning: – In this stage, the preparation of a project for certification is carried out where the personnel involved in this project meet the various requirements for the certification program.

Registration: – This stage includes registration for the certification program of the project that depicts anyone to view the status of the project and other information regarding the process of certification.

Credit Rulings: – This provides a brief regarding RFI’s detected during the execution stage of the project and to fix it, you can post to CIR for examination by certification personnel.

Application: – All necessary information is applied to the project for the final step for certification. CIR information applicable to the project is applied and the submission project then begins.

Project Review: – The project is reviewed by a third-party organization and changes advised can be resolved for certification.

Credit Appeal: – Model is submitted for credit approval.

Certification: – If the project is adequate by the certification body it gives a score and provides Green Building Certification.

Certification Levels

There are four levels that are described below:-

LEED Certificate can be issued to companies when their project is around 40-49 score by USGBC.

LEED Silver is given to firms when their score is around 50-59 declared by USGBC.

LEED Gold can be issued to those companies whose scores are in a line of 60-79 and managed by USGBC.

LEED Platinum is given to those companies whose score varies from 80+ by USGBC.

Benefits of Green Building with BIM

The construction industry is at the booming stage with making buildings go green and providing various benefits such as BIM provides more visibility to the projects and solves risk through a collaborative and inclusive process. This way green technology that is used can be more collaborative. It also gives alignment, scheduling and material quantities for better cash flow analysis.  This makes accurate scheduling and optimization of material used for energy efficiency.

BIM Modeling provides a visual representation by illustrating energy-saving concepts for green certification such as LEED which improves the reputation of the firm.

It allows re-using the models to standardize design and construction which in turn reduces material consumption and saves cost which adds a technological portfolio for companies to go through with it.

Conclusion

Green technology is what is leading the construction industries to make buildings that are not harming the environment and have societal impacts. The certification body depicts certification and stages in which green technology has to be used. It promotes the marketing and branding of the companies. More and more companies are demanding for making buildings go green and sustain for a longer time as the green certification process is primitive and time-consuming.