On October 21st, the Tecnalia facilities in Donostia hosted a second BIM4Ren workshop linked to the BIM4Ren pilot buildings in the Basque country as part of our Living Labs activities.
The aim of this meeting, in which also participated BIM4Ren partner Kursaal, together with the University of the Basque country (UPV/EHU) and the Spanish architecture/urbanism studio FRL Arquitectos, was to demonstrate and quantify the impacts obtained through the use of BIM and its processes during the execution of renovation works.
The first part of the workshop was fully devoted to the BIM4Ren project, with the pilot buildings you see in the image below.
From the experience of the participants, the difficulties of using BIM in the residential renovation brought up technical, social, and economic issues, but also advantages for the end user, once they accepted BIM applications in their buildings. It was set that a paradigm shift in the way of working in renovation processes, involving all the stakeholders along the whole lifecycle, is key for success.
Subsequently, a debate was opened to analyse the key performance indicators (KPIs) to be studied in each pilot building, to determine how to quantify them along the construction process and the degree to which BIM can have an impact on their improvement.
As expected by BIM4Ren, the workshop revealed clear benefits of using BIM tools, specifically in the construction phase, by streamlining the efficiency of the renovation process, allowing cost and time savings. Nevertheless, to prove/demonstrate this enhancement was identified as the main challenge. To that end, a suitable definition of the KPIs and an appropriate measurement procedure for each of them, with the involvement of the whole construction staff, are key.
The BIM4Ren project offers the opportunity to test this approach in two almost-twin pilots with different level of digitalisation run by Kursaal, which will allow to reach conclusions about the real improvement brought by our digital tools in renovation process.
You can learn more about Tecnalia & Kursaal’s work in our pilot sites in these 2 videos:
You can also download these two documents to further understand how these pilot KPIs where first defined: D1.1 on stakeholders’ requirements and constrains and D1.2 on digital collaborative workflows of the building renovation process.