Towards a BIM-enabled sustainable building design process: roles, responsibilities and requirements

Environmental sustainability considerations are often treated as an add-on to building design, following ad hoc processes for their implementation. As a result, the most common problem to achieve a sustainable building outcome is the absence of the right information at the right time to make critical decisions. For design team members to appreciate the requirements of multidisciplinary collaboration, there is a need for transparency and a shared understanding of the process. This research presents the findings from 25 in-depth interviews with industry practitioners concerning 10 case studies of buildings, which achieved high sustainability certification ratings (e.g. BREEAM, Passivhaus, Part L), to identify best practices in sustainable building design (SBD). The results identify the key players’ roles and responsibilities, tasks, deliverables and critical decision points for SBD. These components have been coordinated explicitly in a systematic process that utilises Information Communication Technology (ICT), Building Information Modelling (BIM), and Building Performance Analysis (BPA) software to realise the benefits of combining distributed teams’ expertise.