KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS TO ANALYZE AND IMPROVE MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION FLOW IN THE BIM DESIGN PROCESSand improve management of information flow in the BIM design process

Thanks to the interoperability provided by the IFC standard, BIM technologies and IFC model servers are beginning to enable a design environment where the exchange of information among the actors can be synchronous and continuous using a single and central data model. Although this new set of technologies enables concurrent design, the problems associated with managing the flow of information itself in a concurrent design environment requires explicit management of editing rights and version control at the level of individual objects, rather than at the file level. However, while these are technical issues that have standard solutions, managing designers’ involvement in the process also becomes more challenging, requiring the development of new management methods suitable for the BIM collaborative environment.Common problems such as information ‘overflow’, incomplete modelling solutions or incorrectly matched technical solutions, and inventories of work in progress due to inattentive designers, if not treated methodically in the BIM platform, can quickly cause bottlenecks for the advancement of the process. The bottlenecks result in process waste (such as time spent waiting, large inventories of design information, processing sequences that cause unnecessary iterations, long cycle times and schedule overruns, etc.). Application of concepts that allow structuring and measuring of the information flow can improve the process and reduce the waste of resources, but there is no specific methodology for measuring information flow in a BIM environment. Taking a previous study, in which seven key performance indicators were developed and validated for application with conventional technology, as a starting point, this work has developed the methodology for using these indicators in a BIM project.