Once a building is handed over for use, the primary focus shifts to daily property maintenance services, equipment management, and energy consumption monitoring. These tasks are essential to ensure the building’s health and to implement green energy management practices. The operation and maintenance BIM (Building Information Modeling) platform is built upon the completed as-built models. These completion models provide comprehensive, accurate, and consistent spatial geometric data alongside non-geometric information. They integrate details about building materials, equipment, inspections, testing records, and energy consumption monitoring.
The platform allows daily maintenance and operation data for the prefabricated building and its supporting equipment and facilities to be linked and recorded. This enables quick retrieval, precise location, reading, and evaluation of the building’s operational status and its ancillary systems. Additionally, the platform offers big data analytics for monitoring building performance, delivering features such as health reports, fault analysis, warning alerts, fault reporting, pinpointing issues, and maintenance strategy development. The exact positioning of components and their attributes within the model ensures the platform meets ongoing operation and maintenance needs, providing a solid foundation for informed decision-making and management actions.
(1) Property Maintenance Services
The BIM-based operation and maintenance model encompasses all fundamental building information, including structural details, construction processes, and component data. By integrating BIM technology with related tools, it enables efficient monitoring of property health and orderly operation. This helps implement maintenance plans effectively and reduces the risk of significant losses caused by minor issues.
When owners request destructive repairs, property management uses RFID chips to precisely locate components, retrieving corresponding information directly from the BIM model. Replacement parts are procured from manufacturers based on this data and installed quickly using the model’s installation guides. This process facilitates fast repairs at the micro level and supports infinite repurchasing of components community-wide, enhancing both the property’s economic viability and the sustainability of manufacturers’ products.
For owner decoration approvals, property managers reference building, structural, and pipeline information from the BIM model to assess load-bearing structures within specific unit types. They provide informed and practical recommendations for renovation plans, reducing risks of secondary damage or structural compromise.
(2) Equipment Management
Equipment management is a critical and frequent task in daily building maintenance, essential for ensuring smooth building operation. The rise of intelligent buildings has increased both the complexity and cost of equipment management. Since building equipment often operates in integrated systems rather than independently, effective management requires precise equipment location and information linkage.
The BIM delivery model includes key details such as equipment model, manufacturing date, and vendor information, alongside technical data like installation and operational instructions. Equipment location is tracked through a combination of RFID technology and the BIM model. This information is extracted into the operation and maintenance management system, creating a comprehensive database that supports rapid equipment queries and accurate positioning.
Equipment maintenance is divided into pre-maintenance and post-maintenance stages. Property management staff develop maintenance schedules based on BIM equipment data, setting fixed-time reminders. Maintenance is performed according to inspection results, with logs recorded in the system. In case of failures, staff can quickly locate faulty equipment, access related information via mobile devices, and handle emergencies promptly to prevent greater damage. Following fault assessment, repairs or replacements are planned and approved through the system. Upon approval, repairs proceed with real-time updates fed back into the BIM model and operation and maintenance platform.
(3) Energy Consumption Management
Energy consumption represents the largest expense throughout a building’s operational lifecycle, especially for super high-rise structures. Without effective energy efficiency controls, owners and society face significant waste. Key physical indicators such as power, heating, gas, water usage, temperature, and indoor air quality are monitored in real-time through IoT, internet, and sensor technologies. This data is automatically collected and uploaded to the operation and maintenance platform, allowing integration with smart city equipment monitoring systems.
Energy consumption can then be dynamically adjusted based on data from different building zones and times, supporting green operation and maintenance. Users benefit from intuitive interactive modules displaying health environments and energy conservation tips, which are shared in real-time through public displays or management terminals, enhancing communication between operators and occupants.
Energy management via BIM models and operation systems involves two key areas: daily data management and intelligent control. The system gathers real-time energy consumption data from BIM-connected meters, providing immediate feedback to maintenance personnel. Operators can analyze demand by category—such as water, electricity, gas, and heating—and by timeframes—daily, monthly, or yearly—generating visual comparisons for trend analysis. Data mining helps define reasonable energy consumption thresholds, triggering alerts for anomalies that can be investigated and resolved promptly, reducing waste.
Homeowners have access to detailed energy usage reports by various time dimensions and can verify bills directly. They can also use an integrated payment platform for online bill settlement and report any energy concerns through the system, where maintenance staff respond and resolve issues efficiently. The BIM-based energy management system, integrated with IoT sensors, intelligently adjusts consumption to maintain a comfortable, balanced living environment for residents.
Liu Lu (Shandong Jianzhu University)
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