BIM and Safety Rules Based Automated Identification of Unsafe Design Factors in Construction

Design for Safety (DfS) has been considered as an effective approach to improving construction safety performance via taking into account safety problems during design. The approach, however, is not yet implemented effectively and efficiently in practice. This research tries to develop a practical DfS approach, which can automatically identify potential safety problems resulted from design by integrating BIM (Building Information Modeling) with design safety rules. Design safety rules related to construction safety is defined and built based on design regulations or codes, and a BIM and safety rules integrated approach developed to implement the automated identification of safety problems. Furthermore, a test-bed project is presented to test the validity of this approach. As a result, the unsafe factors in design can be detected during construction to aid in construction safety management on site. Compared with traditional safety management methods, the BIM-based DfS approach is automated, thus reducing the time and labor cost spent on safety checking and improving the performance of construction safety management.