BIM-based investigation of total energy consumption in delivering building products

The energy consumed by a building is divided into two parts embodied energy and operation energy. Further, the embodied energy is constituted of energy intensity of materials, energy consumed during transportation and energy consumed for construction. This paper proposes a methodology to integrate embodied energy consumption into a BIM platform and provides a seamless analysis based on available information. Plug-ins are developed to fulfill a convenient linkage between the BIM model and external databases. Simulation models are created, which can be used as templates for energy optimization during transportation and construction. By analyzing different resource combination scenarios, lower energy consumption can be achieved.