BIM for Sustainable Design: Results of an Industry Survey

Recently, growing environmental concerns and rising energy costs have tremendously increased the demand of sustainable buildings. More and more, both public and private organizations are requiring architects, engineers and constructors to design and build with minimal environmental impact (Azhar and Brown, 2009). The most effective decisions related to the sustainable design of a facility can be made in the early design and preconstruction stages. Traditional CAD planning environments typically do not have the capability of performing such analyses in early stages of design development. In order to evaluate the state-of-the-art and benefits of BIM-based sustainability, analyses and design, a questionnaire survey was conducted of design and construction firms who use BIM technology and/or sustainable design/construction practices in most of their projects.