The application of automated rule checking to existing UK building regulations using BIM technologies

Building designs in countries like the United Kingdom are currently checked manually against a frequently changing and increasingly complex set of building regulations. It is a major task for designers and those bodies that are charged with enforcing building regulations. As a result, there can often be ambiguity, inconsistency in assessments and delays in the overall construction process. This scenario indicates the need for automated building regulation compliance checking, which is an easier and valid option. As part of this, a critical review is carried out of the building code compliance checking related efforts undertaken in different countries, including Australia, Singapore, Australia, Norway and USA. Furthermore, it is determined that the use of Building Information Models (BIM) and the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standard is imperative for automated compliance checking in England and Wales. Most of the initiatives mentioned above focuses on creating object based rules and mapping the entities encapsulated within them to the international building model schema. The schema is designed to support the needs of an international user and takes little consideration of national semantics (e.g.UK practice and culture). Hence, the research focuses on creating UK building regulation specific data model schema. The analysis of Part-B1 through knowledge formalisation has resulted in identification of over 120 semantic entities. Using the output, a Part-B1 data model schema has been developed using EXPRESS-G language. Thus, an England and Wales building regulation specific, semantically rich, object model schema appropriate for the requirements of automated compliance checking has been developed. The data model schema development results into a document modeling method. This method was developed in a manner such that it would be applicable to model any building regulation technical document. The development of a document modeling method acts as a contribution to the knowledge as building experts, rule authors and computer programmers can use it for data modeling. The said methodology was implemented on a sample legislative document to validate its usefulness. Also through the research work, concepts such as knowledge formalisation and a clause filter system were coined and successfully utilised to overcome the issues related to unsuitability of building regulations. This work accounts as a contribution to knowledge due to its novelty. A clause filter system was developed primarily to extract appropriate information suitable for automated compliance checking. On the basis of various key findings, a detailed framework for automated compliance checking of the UK building regulations is delivered through the research work.