LCA Analysis Through a Visual Programming Tool: Workflow on a BIM Model Case Study

Stefano Politi; Giacomo Bergonzoni; Ivan Walter Junior Cincotta; Fabrizio Sampietro

doi:10.6092/issn.2036-1602/8824

Authors

Stefano Politi Università di Bologna

Construction Engineer, he is currently a PhD candidate in Technology of Architecture at the University of Bologna. He focuses his research on buildings sustainability (Rating Systems), environmental impacts of constructions and on the technologies for the building process digitization (BIM). He practiced as intern at Open Project srl, working on LEED® and BIM tasks. He provides teaching assistance at the School of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Bologna.
Giacomo Bergonzoni Open Project

Licensed Engineer specialized in BIM and sustainable design, currently working as BIM Manager at Open Project, an architecture and engineering firm based in Bologna, Italy. He started at CIMS lab Ottawa, Canada working on HBIM. Nowadays he implements and manages state of the art BIM in large and small scale projects. He is working on Italian BIM Standards (UNI 11337) and is speacker at international conferences.
Ivan Walter Junior Cincotta Open Project

Graduated in Architectural Engineering and he obtained a Second Level Master’s degree in Sustainable Constructive Processes at IUAV improving his skills about parametric design, energy optimization and BIM.
He worked in BIM environment for architectural firm in Milan. Currently he is the BIM Coordinator in an integrated design team on complex buildings developing at Open Project Srl in Bologna.
Fabrizio Sampietro Open Project

Graduated in architectural engineering at the University of Bologna, sharpened his skills attending the Master "eBIM" at the Ferrara University.
Enthusiastic about computational design he dedicated primarily to the development of digital procedures for the management and control in the framework of BIM.
Currently Fabrizio is collaborating with Open Project as BIM computational designer.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2036-1602/8824

Keywords:

LCA, BIM, Visual Programming, Environmental Impact, Building Materials

Abstract

BIM tools also allow to conduct various impact analysis and, with regard to the growing concern about environmental issues, they embody a valuable mean to analyse buildings process consequences thus guiding designers towards better and more aware choices.The capacity of BIM applications to evaluate environmental issues would be enhanced if integrated with Life- Cycle Assessment (LCA) tools considered among the most suitable methods for evaluating such impacts. However, a typical barrier in performing LCA during the early design stages, i.e. the moment that influence the most the project outputs, is the lack of project information. Usually, this implies LCA to be performed after the design phase, when all the significant decisions are already taken.The implementation of LCA within the early stages of the design process, possibly through an automated method, can enhance the control of environmental variables hence, the integration of BIM and LCA, appears to be a suitable opportunity.The parametric approach allows BIM-based software to collect data and connect them with model elements. In order to avoid manual compilation of complex records, Visual Programming tools can cooperate with the authoring BIM software and interrelate the model with external sources such as materials environmental impact databases. Moreover, they can be configured to perform complex LCA calculation and automatically update the outcomes when something in the model changes. The goal of this paper is to propose a sample workflow applied to a case study, in order to provide AEC stakeholders with a simplified BIM-based method for easily detecting the potential consequence of undertaking certain design choices at initial project stages or, at least, at those phases when definitive materials and products selection occurs.