Integration of BIM and IoT to improve building performance for occupants’ perspecti

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to describe and implement how a specific form of IoT, sensors, can be integrated with BIM in order to improve the building performance, when the perspective taken is the end-users. It seeks to explore different perceived values of BIM and sensor integration for the occupants who directly use the building facilities. The thesis also describes the concept, frameworks and cases of how BIM and sensors integration can be setup. These are used for an implementation at a case facility. Three main methods are used – literature review, comparative case study, and a smallscale implementation, containing a survey and sensor implementation based on the respondents’ satisfaction with the office air quality. A basic literature review is used to gather the fundamental concepts used within the relevant areas, and to review the empirical research connected to these. The conceptual part of the thesis review frameworks for BIM and sensor integration, and points toward a more user-centric framework that is later developed in relation to the thesis’ empirical results. The theoretical framework integrates Information Systems Theories with Knowledge Management for a framework of understanding how knowledge about new kinds of Information Systems in developing areas function. The empirical part of the thesis is structured into two main phases, one descriptive comparative case study, and the other an implementation based in the first phase results. The first phase is descriptive, where two cases of sensor and BIM implementation processes for FM are described. The main case of Tyréns company (Tyréns), and a reference case of Mästerhuset is used for understanding how different organizational structures may lead to different perceived values and processes of BIM and sensor integration for the end-users. The second phase is an implementation at the main case, Tyréns’ headquarter building. Here the end-user perspective is employed with a survey that is constructed in accordance with some of the fundamental concepts and research reviewed, in order to measure the perceived satisfaction with the air quality of the end-users working environment. The answers show concerns with air quality in the meeting rooms, and this is used as the basis for a small-scale implementation of sensors, where CO2 and temperature sensors are set up. The results show how different organizational-specific conditions generate different perceived values of BIM and sensor integration depending on ownership relation to the end-users. The case study also illustrate the different processes of BIM and sensor integration may be setup to supplement building performance. This points to a needed add-on into frameworks that conceptualizes BIM and sensor integration without the inclusion of the end-users’ perspective. Based on this an end-user conceptual framework of BIM and sensors is proposed with the supplementary part of a knowledge layer, named analytic layer and data source from occupants.