ZEMCH 2012 International Conference Proceedings - page 75

T h e A p p l i c a t i o n o f B I M i n V o l u m e t r i c C o n s t r u c t i o n
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Enemetric ERP System
An ERP system controls and manages all the business operations. Linking BIM
software to ERP has several beneficial impacts on the workflow, particularly for
Estimating, Contracts, Planning and Production. Projects are directly based on
individual BIMs, with each BIM having their own set of attributes, further decomposed
into volumetric modules, each with their own timeline for production, requirements for
resource and relevant budgets.
In terms of Estimating, the BIM software will communicate directly with the ERP Stock
Control database, to retrieve accurate pricing for building components such as windows,
doors, steel and HVAC systems of items either in stock or to be placed on order from
other suppliers. This can yield a highly accurate up-to-date estimate (5D BIM). The
estimate can then be used to provide a complete budget, including sub-contract work,
which can then be used to develop quotes to tender bids for the Contracts database of
the ERP system. Resource requirements are planned using the Planning component of
the ERP system, whereby detailed schedules and project plans can be produced (4D
BIM).
1.3 Object-Oriented BIM and Data Structures for Modular Buildings
The management and manipulation of BIM data is possible with object oriented data
modeling, whereby the building can be composed of many elements (objects) which
have various relationships. Enemetric adopt a modular method of construction, making
logical associations important on a number of levels, not only structurally, but also in
terms of energy and construction; a whole building object is composed of many module
objects each module has a structural relationship with adjacent modules. Each module is
made up of beam objects, with internal steel framing objects, with load requirements.
Rooms can be considered objects, as are windows doors, floors etc. In terms of energy
balances, rooms will have relationships with other rooms, with respect to heat transfer.
Each room itself will contain objects for lighting, heating, etc. There will be sensor and
actuator objects and relationships. One sensor object may be related to several
actuators (Motion sensor for light control, or intruder alarm). Room objects may belong to
several module objects, and so forth. Each module will have various priorities for fitting
of services or furnishings. Building data like this and object relationships can be modeled
in data structures such as IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) or markup language XML
(Green Building gbXML). The collection of data objects and their relationships is the
central feature of the Building Information Model. Both standards offer benefits for
modular BIM data structures, with IFC enabling tightly coupled relational data, and
gbXML offering a readable XML based format which can be extended (Dong, Lam,
Huang and Dobbs, 2007). The readability of XML has pushed the industry towards
creating further schemas, such as ifcXML and agcXML. A modular BIM XML schema
would prove to be beneficial as a readable data source for building projects at
Enemetric, providing interoperability between CAD (gbXML to test design ideas in
various drawing tools), CAM (XML for CNC cutting) , BSM (gbXML intermediary format
for dynamic thermal simulation, whole building simulation, or structural finite element
analysis ) and ERP (XML Project Management -PMXML.)
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