The brief

Organize how changes to a design in the development and realization stages can be registered and processed in BIM. These changes may refer to:

• Change to a property of a symbol (e.g. lengthening of a wall)
• Change of the type of a symbol (e.g. change of family for a door)
• Change in a relation between symbols (e.g. relocation of a door in a wall)
• Change in a time property of a symbol (e.g. as a result of a scheduling change)

Organize the process of change management in both stages as a series of tasks that reflect the above types of changes and take into account possible causes of change, such as:

• Changes in the brief (e.g. new activities added)
• Changes in the budget (e.g. increase of façade cost necessitating reduction of cost elsewhere)
• Changes in an aspect of the design (e.g. change in the heating solution or the fire rating of internal doors and ensuing interfacing issues – not just clash detection)
• Changes in the construction schedules (e.g. due to delays in the delivery of components or to bad weather)
• Errors in construction (e.g. wrong dimensioning or specifications of an element)

Deliverables

1. Process and information diagrams, accompanied by short explanatory comments
2. Basic model in a BIM editor demonstrating the way changes can be implemented

Evaluation criteria

1. The process diagrams should:
   1. Make all actors, stakeholders, tasks and their relations explicit
   2. Include feedback loops for controlling the changes and their effects
2. The information diagrams should:
   1. Indicate which symbol properties and relations change, and how
   2. Allow to detect how changes are propagated from one symbol to another
3. The model in BIM should contain:
   1. Relevant examples for each kind of change
   2. Schedules that allow tracking of changes

Roles

If the exercise is a group assignment, consider roles for the following aspects:

• Process management
• Information management
• BIM modelling
• Case analyses (for finding realistic examples)