BIM for airport Facility Management (FM): The case of a US International Airport

Abstract

Facilities Management (FM) at airports involves the use of systems such as Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). Currently, the integration of BIM with CMMS is yet to reach maturity, resulting in the inability to reuse BIM data produced prior to the operations and maintenance phase. The lack of accurate and untimely handover of equipment data contributes to failed CMMS programs. The studied airport had a low CMMS utilization resulting from a lack of equipment data from recent and old construction projects and lacked an efficient process for acquiring, storing, and exchanging asset data from construction into its CMMS. To address this, the airport sought for solutions to reuse BIM data in the CMMS. Utilizing a Design Science Research (DSR) methodology, this research proposed and tested a solution technology innovation comprising a BIM-FM integration framework and structured workflow based on BIM and COBie for FM data delivery into a CMMS. The proposed solution was tested on a real-world project at the airport: showing efficacy to provide the required equipment data in a timely and accurate manner as compared to the existing practice. The study provides practical evidence of application of BIM and COBie in FM data delivery from a handover perspective.