Value Proposition of COBie at University of Washington

Abstract

Building Information Modeling (BIM), has been practiced for several years by designers and contractors in design and construction phases. After receiving a positive feedback of the BIM in industry, owners are now interested in getting the benefits of the BIM in operations and maintenance. The information value produced during each phases of the project drops in phase transfer during the building lifecycle, and this drop has the highest value in transition from construction to operations and maintenance (O&M). BIM can capture the O&M information produced during the phases of pre-design, design, and construction, and transfer it to the operations and maintenance phase. Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) was developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers as a method of delivering O&M information and project specific data in a standardized format. COBie can be extracted from BIM, and be imported to Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) of the owner where the maintenance work orders are managed. The value of COBie for Facility Management is determined in two phases of turn over, and operations and maintenance. The value of COBie at University of Washington in turn over phase was investigated previously, and this research study focuses mainly on the value of COBie in operations and maintenance. Interviews with Facility Services (FS) employees were conducted to understand the work order work flows, and how COBie can impact it. The challenges FS employees are facing performing the work orders are related to two categories of sources and processes, and research study has investigated how COBie can address these challenges and help the work order process. Based on the interview result analysis, since COBie can provide comprehensive O&M data from the first day of operations with high accuracy, it can considerably ease the work order process. But FS employees are also reliant on other sources and documents like as-build plans and O&M manuals to get information to perform work orders. COBie is not enough on its own to provide all the information needed for Facility Management, but based on the COBie standard and the data provided in each project, FS employees can be less reliant on other sources than COBie.