Building owners appreciate the benefits of integrated project delivery (IPD) and building information modeling (BIM), which have proven to help reduce construction costs and accelerate schedules.

However, life-cycle facility operations and maintenance remain a much more significant overall cost factor, ranging anywhere from one-and-a-half to five times the price of construction. As a result, many owners seek to optimize the profitability of their facilities by reducing operations and maintenance costs and designing in health and quality-of-experience factors that tend to enhance the productivity of the people occupying the facility.

To support these objectives, owners want to know how the data and knowledge encoded in the BIM developed during design and construction can also support life-cycle cost management.

Given that computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) systems have extracted room and space data from 2-D CAD for decades, one might ask what’s new in BIM for facilities management? The answer: A LOT!

As technology continues to advance and our experience deepens with a variety of projects using IPD and BIM processes and tools, following are just a few of the notable features: