The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for automation and integration of design processes: A case study of the Uganda Police Force headquarters project, Naguru, Kampala.

Abstract

The Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry operates through collaboration between different professionals to deliver projects. Traditionally, construction documentations consist of design drawings and specifications delivered by Architects and Engineers to Clients and used to hire a contractor for the project. Once the general contractor receives the construction documents and the construction commences, the relationship between the Architects or Engineers and the contractor begins. If contestations or discrepancies emerge in the construction documents, any attempts to amend them are usually slow, characterised by long trails of paperwork between the designers and contractors. This can stifle progress of works as the contractors wait for pertinent amendments to the designs to proceed with construction. Building Information Modelling (BIM) has permeated into the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry but the application of BIM to automate and integrate project designs are still limited. This final year project’s study provides an alternative approach to bridge this gap between Architects and Engineers by demonstrating the capability of BIM towards project design automation and integration. In this final year project’s study, an assessment of the extent of BIM utilisation by local design firms in Uganda was done using a questionnaire survey and its main role in this research was to complement the case study by providing a deeper understanding of how project processes could be affected by BIM. In our survey, we interviewed people using an online questionnaire to know their connection with BIM adoption in respect to construction projects. The study provides an automated procedure, using computational details and the configuration of tool sets in Autodesk Revit, Dynamo Visual Programming and Robot Structural Analysis Professional software packages to bind the architectural model with the structural model of the UPF command center. The project contributes to the field by presenting a solution which is capable of an automatic generation of optimised structural designs based on architectural models. The solution also acts as a blueprint in developing similar systems for simpler buildings.