Systematising multidisciplinary sustainable building design processes utilising BIM

Purpose Sustainability considerations are often treated as an add-on to building design, following ad-hoc processes for their implementation. The purpose of this study was to investigate, model and facilitate the early stages of building information modelling (BIM) enabled sustainable building design (SBD) by formalising the ad-hoc working relationships of the best practices in order to standardise the optimal collaboration workflows. Design/methodology/approach Four stages of data collection were conducted, including a total of 32 semi-structured interviews with industry experts from 17 organisations. Fourteen “best practice” case studies were identified, and roles and responsibilities, resources, information exchanges, interdependencies, timing and sequence of events and critical decisions were examined. Findings The research classified the critical components of SBD into a framework utilising content and thematic analyses. These components were coordinated explicitly into a systematic process, which followed concurrent engineering (CE) principles utilising Integrated DEFinition (IDEF) 3 structured diagramming technique. Then, Green BIM Box (GBB) workflow management prototype tool was developed to analyse communication and delivery of BIM-enabled SBD in a centralised system. Originality/value This study represents an improvement to previous attempts to systematically define the BIM-enabled SBD process for the early stages. The results support the idea that a transparent SBD process, which follows specified communication patterns, can assist in achieving sustainability efficiently in terms of time, cost and effort.