Sustainable design is the factually loudest buzzword in an AEC industry. It is actually a very good trend because an impact of the construction sector to the climate change is the second largest in Europe (Eurostat, 2013). That means there is a need for a major change.
Construction industry adapts sustainable design slowly compared to other industries, e.g. manufacturing. It is mostly related to lack of technological progress, as the most work is still done by hands of a construction worker and that won’t change soon. That leads to never changing traditions of craft. Well, but that is only one part of a coin. Talking about project design, the story is quite different. Designers constantly search for possibilities to make their processes leaner, automate their repetitive actions. All these help to save energy and money.
Sustainability is gaining momentum in residential building design. The biggest problem is the need to spend time for drafts and document preparation, however, this time could be designated for passive design and/or other project decision making. So designers seek to automate their work as much as possible.
With the dawn of BIM it became possible to automate every design work excluding decision making. All what each designer has to do – he needs to decide how a building should look by modeling walls, floors, roof, windows, etc. Then he can see if the project meets passive design criteria. If not, designer makes changes again and again until desired result is reached.
After all issues are resolved, structural part of a building can be made only after designer’s decision what standard should be used and what design intent designer has. Using BIM software all accompanying documentation and drafts would be generated automatically.
