A methodology to integrate maintenance management systems and BIM to improve building management

Abstract

Facility management (FM) teams routinely deal with numerous tasks, tools, and data sources to ensure the buildings they manage function properly. This diversity and the organizational complexity of these teams increase operational expenses related to interoperability. To address this, a methodology integrating BIM with maintenance management system logs is investigated herein. It includes two novel ways of automatically exchanging and visualizing such data using BIM as a common data environment. They provide building operators with greater context to expedite the decision-making process. A sequence diagram based on a typical facility management organization illustrates that these tools improve data exchange efficiency by which the operators understand the data and target operational improvements better. This methodology reduces the dependency on external programming languages for data processing. A text mining workflow is leveraged to process the work order (WO) descriptions. The methodology is demonstrated using a case study, which indicates that only 47 out of 81 rooms have one or more WOs and over 60% of all WOs are related to five rooms on the top floor. By focusing on these spaces, the underlying reasons and patterns of the faults were identified, which enhances the productivity of FM teams, occupants, and energy efficiency.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), Ontario Centres of Innovation (OCI), and Brookfield Global Integrated Solutions (BGIS) for funding this work. The authors would like to acknowledge Carleton Facilities Management and Planning, and Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) Lab for providing the CMMS database and preliminary 3D model, respectively.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Appendix

The script existing in the last node of the second tool developed in Figure 8 under Section 3.2 along with sample datasets provided at https://github.com/pedramnojedehi/CMMS-BIM-Data-Exchange.