BIM-based Intelligent Acquisition of Construction Information for Cost Estimation of Building Projects

Construction cost estimation, which is normally labor-intensive and error-prone, is one of the most important works in the architecture, engineering, construction, and facilities management industry during a project's lifecycle. With the development of information technology, it is expected that the efficiency and accuracy of cost estimation for tendering of building projects (TBP cost estimation for short hereafter) can be greatly improved if it can be carried out automatically based on the design results using building information modeling (BIM-based design results for short hereafter). One of the major obstacle to realize the automatic TBP cost estimation is the acquisition of the construction information (e.g. construction method, equipment), which are necessary for TBP cost estimation but often not included in the design results. This paper aims to establish an approach to identify and acquire the construction information systematically in order to facilitate the automatic TBP cost estimation based on BIM-based design results. First, the process of TBP cot estimation based on BQ method in China is introduced and the related specifications are classified. Then a typical specification for TBP cost estimation is analyzed to identify the construction information that are required in TBP cost estimation and a typical specification for the requirement on design detail fulfillment is analyzed to identify the construction information that can be obtained from the design result. Next, based on the above results, the construction information that need to be established during TBP cost estimation are highlighted and an approach to acquire them based on BIM-based design results are presented. Finally, the applicability of the approach is discussed. For simplicity, the scope for the analysis is confined to TBP cost estimation of concrete construction of reinforced concrete structures in this paper.