Building information modelling energy performance assessment on domestic dwellings: a comparative study

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is growing in pace, not only in design and construction stages, but also in the analysis of facilities throughout their life cycle. With this continued growth and utilisation of the BIM processes, there comes the possibility to adopt such procedures to measure accurately the energy efficiency of buildings; and therefore, their energy usage. To this end, the aim of this research is to investigate if the introduction of BIM Energy Performance Assessment in the form of software analysis provides accurate results, when compared with actual energy consumption recorded. Through selective criterion sampling, three domestic case studies are scrutinised, with baseline figures taken from existing energy providers, the results scrutinised and compared with calculations provided from two separate BIM energy analysis software packages. Of the numerous software packages available, criterion sampling is used to select two of the most prominent platforms available on the market today. The two packages selected for scrutiny are Integrated Environmental Solutions - Virtual Environment (IES-VE) and Autodesk's Green Building Studio (GBS). The results indicate that IES-VE estimated the energy use in region of ±8% in two out of three case studies, while GBS estimated usage approximately ±5%. The findings indicate that the introduction of BIM energy performance assessment, using proprietary software analysis, is a viable alternative to manual calculations of building energy use, mainly due to the accuracy and speed of assessing, even the most complex models. Given the surge in accurate and detailed BIM models and the importance placed on the continued monitoring and control of buildings energy use within today’s environmentally conscious society, this provides an alternative means by which to assess accurately a buildings energy usage, in a quick and cost effective manner.