WBS-based dynamic multi-dimensional BIM database for total construction as-built documentation

As-built documentation is valuable to assist decision-making in project control, and building operation and maintenance applications. Given the importance of as-built documentation, the quickly maturing technology of building information modeling (BIM), an object-oriented information-integration platform, has led to the emergence of concurrent as-built documentation during the construction phase. However, in the current practice, integrating construction records into BIM remains a challenge due to their heterogeneous and unstructured data formats. This paper presents a work breakdown structure (WBS)-based database design to enable the creation of a dynamic multi-dimensional BIM database to incorporate construction records in a timely manner. In this study, the construction records were defined as additional dimension, and a WBS code-based automated linking mechanism between construction project tasks and BIM objects was created to generate the multi-dimensional BIM database. The automatic linking mechanism and the WBS-based dynamic multi-dimensional BIM database were tested and verified through the implementation of a real construction project schedule and a BIM model. The test results illustrate that the newly created method is successful in incorporating construction records collected during the construction phase to generate a dynamic BIM database for generating complete as-built documentation.