(5) Inconsistent Cash Flow. Funds are the lifeblood of enterprises, playing a vital role in the daily business operations and investment activities of construction companies. They form the foundation for effective capital management and sustainable development.
Engineering project construction units must complete schedule plans as required to apply for and secure stage-specific project funds from the client, ensuring the continuity of daily production activities. However, if the construction unit fails to manage construction organization and operations effectively, and if construction costs are not controlled properly or communication with the client lacks consensus, it can disrupt normal project progress, cause schedule delays, and delay payments. A broken funding chain jeopardizes daily construction activities, putting project completion at risk and negatively impacting the company’s financial performance. Therefore, planned and targeted cost control is crucial.
Traditional financial risk management in construction tends to emphasize accounting over managerial control and lacks a scientific budgeting model. The fund management roles are often unclear due to imperfect financial supervision systems. These issues highlight the urgent need for improved funding management throughout the construction process.
By leveraging BIM technology to analyze project phase costs, it becomes possible to clearly track planned versus actual expenses within contract and cost budgets. Using the construction schedule and resource allocation of each phase, fund management can be optimized to ensure effective cash flow throughout the entire construction process, minimizing the risk of uncoordinated fund turnover.
(6) Non-Standardized Acceptance Procedures. Project completion acceptance requires the construction unit to submit a completion report to the client. The client then organizes the design, surveying, construction, and supervision teams to conduct a comprehensive project evaluation. Only after passing the acceptance inspection can a completion certificate be issued. Phased acceptance at different stages of construction is also critical.
Traditional management models have significant acceptance gaps, especially in inspecting concealed works. Third-party supervisors often find themselves in a challenging position during construction, struggling to see the practical impact of their oversight and often lacking recognition. Nonetheless, quality supervision is indispensable.
BIM technology can transform supervisory review and inspection methods by extracting relevant information from the project database through a 3D building information model. On-site inspections can be conducted more accurately based on actual construction conditions, improving acceptance completeness. After completion, supervisors integrate acceptance data and materials into the BIM system, allowing all project participants to view results on a shared platform. This fosters efficient multi-party acceptance and enables real-time monitoring of inspection status. It also highlights quality issues requiring rectification and facilitates secondary inspections, significantly reducing risks associated with non-standard acceptance and enhancing project quality.
Operation and Maintenance Phase
During operation and maintenance, technical and natural risks persist. Key challenges include difficulty detecting hidden dangers, challenges in maintaining concealed works, and insufficient monitoring of energy consumption.
(1) Hidden Dangers Are Difficult to Detect. When a construction project enters operation, it typically means it meets completion standards. However, hidden dangers may still exist during actual operation. Improper human operation or external factors can cause failures in equipment, fire protection, security inspections, and other systems. Detecting internal structural issues is often challenging, posing significant risks. If hidden problems go undetected, minor faults can escalate into major failures, endangering the safety of occupants.
BIM-based hidden danger detection enables direct integration of operation and maintenance data with the 3D model for effective monitoring and management. The 3D model visually displays equipment pathways, facilitating rapid fault diagnosis, switch position analysis, and identification of affected areas during equipment shutdowns, ensuring safe operation. By linking fire protection, equipment, and other systems with the BIM model, safety assessment simulations can be performed, optimized simulation data generated, and evaluation reports created. All this information is integrated into the BIM collaborative platform to prevent and control potential future risks.
(2) Challenges in Maintaining Concealed Works. Concealed works in typical housing projects include foundation engineering, steel reinforcement, pipelines, and embedded components. These elements are difficult to inspect after construction and acceptance are complete. Despite initial quality assurance, problems may arise during operation due to engineering defects, environmental factors, or human error.
When concealed works encounter issues, maintenance costs are significantly higher than for other components. Identifying fault points is difficult, and maintaining these works without causing further structural damage is a major challenge. Effective monitoring during routine inspections is essential. Traditional maintenance relies on personnel experience and drawings after faults occur, but this approach often lacks accuracy and increases maintenance risks.
BIM-based maintenance of concealed works involves accurately locating components and equipment within the building information model, digitizing related data such as equipment parameters, manufacturer details, and acceptance records, and integrating this information into the BIM model. During routine inspections, on-site findings are compared against the ideal model to verify maintenance effectiveness.
(3) Insufficient Energy Consumption Monitoring. China has actively promoted energy consumption monitoring systems for public buildings, which help managers analyze energy usage and improve evaluations. However, a lack of unified standards and organizational frameworks limits real-time data sharing and monitoring. Traditional methods rely on manual data collection, which is inefficient. After data collection, energy consumption is analyzed quantitatively, but this independent data often lacks sufficient reference value, highlighting the need for data sharing.
For buildings with large spans, internal air circulation directly impacts indoor air quality, affecting the comfort of office workers. Parameters such as air cleanliness and carbon dioxide concentration influence the working environment. Reasonable air supply control can adjust for varying temperatures.
With BIM technology, the overall building temperature and exhaust gas concentrations can be visually monitored under preset conditions. This supports maintaining an optimal ventilation frequency of 0.5 air changes per hour and wind speeds below 0.3 m/s. Air filtration and air conditioning systems can be adjusted seasonally to ensure a comfortable workplace.
Monitoring building operation ensures good performance. Conducting evacuation drills using BIM models for fires, earthquakes, and other emergencies improves evacuation efficiency and safety, reducing evacuation times and enhancing emergency response.
Liu Shasha (Changjiang University)
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