An integrated BIM-based framework for minimizing embodied energy during building design

Assessment of the embodied energy associated with the production and transportation of materials during the design phase of building provides great potential to profoundly affect the building's energy use and sustainability performance. While Building Information Modeling (BIM) gives opportunities to incorporate sustainability performance indicators in the building design process, it lacks interoperability with the conventional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools used to analyse the environmental footprints of materials in building design. Additionally, many LCA tools use databases based on industry-average values and thus cannot account for differences in the embodied impacts of specific materials from individual suppliers. To address these issues, this paper presents a framework that supports design decisions and enables assessment of the embodied energy associated with building materials supply chain based on suppliers' Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs). The framework also integrates Extract Transform Load (ETL) technology into the BIM to ensure BIM-LCA interoperability, enabling an automated or semi-automated assessment process. The applicability of the framework is tested by developing a prototype and using it in a case study, which shows that a building's energy use and carbon footprint can be significantly reduced during the design phase by accounting the impact of individual material in the supply chain.