BIM and Lean-Business Process Reengineering for Energy Management Optimization of Existing Building Stock

Abstract

Global warming and energy shortage has drastically increased the necessity to reduce energy use in buildings. Improving the energy efficiency of buildings is a key step-in achieving the energy and CO₂ emission targets globally. In this effort, in the presented paper, advanced modeling methods like BIM and energy simulations are conjoined with lean waste elimination concepts into a building process-centric model. Integrating building systems, processes and energy data supports decision making for retrofitting and process reengineering actions within budget constraints. The proposed approach combines existing BIM-based energy performance tools with the development of a Business Process Reengineering architecture to develop an energy efficiency optimization model. In the first direction, BIM-based energy analysis is performed to automatically assess energy performance under varying building conditions. The Lean Business Process Reengineering (LBPR) architecture describes the fundamental layers needed to achieve more energy efficient organizational environments. These layers refer to “Definition”, “Data Information”, “Analysis” and “Therapy”. As Process Performance Indicators are also augmented to the process model, the impacts of modifications through generating different process views can be compared. An optimization model employing genetic algorithms is developed in which, considering the potential budget shortage for building asset interventions, preselected lean business process scenarios feed the optimization model to investigate the optimum solutions. A pilot case that shows the practicability of the proposed methodology is presented.