Information delivery manuals to integrate building product information into design

Despite continuing BIM progress, professionals in the AEC industry often lack the information they need to perform their work. Although this problem could be alleviated by information systems similar to those in other industries, companies struggle to model processes and information needs in the manner necessary to develop information systems that support digital collaboration, workflows, and information exchange. Processes for information systems can be described from four perspectives: task sequence, information need, organizational interaction, and required logic for the specific task. Traditional business process modeling languages often fail to completely cover all four perspectives. BuildingSMART has proposed Information Delivery Manuals (IDMs) to model and re-engineer processes that address the four perspectives through a collaborative methodology in order to standardize and implement them in information systems. BIM implies that objects are bearers of information and logic. The present study has three main aims: (1) to explore IDMs capability to capture all four perspectives, (2) to determine whether an IDM’s collaborative methodology is valid for developing standardized processes, and (3) to ascertain whether IDM’s business rules can support the development of information and logic-bearing BIM objects. The research is based on a case study of re-engineering the bidding process for a design-build project to integrate building product manufacturers, subcontractors and their knowledge about costs, construction methods, and products, with the intention of minimizing the time spent on non-value-adding tasks and reducing design errors.