Early detection of maintainability issues in MEP systems using BIM

The terms maintainability and maintenance are interrelated and often perceived to be difficult to distinguish from each other. Maintainability refers to the measures and actions taken during the design phase in order to assure that the building components and the system to which it belongs can be easily maintained at minimum downtime and cost. On the other hand, maintenance refers to the measures and action taken during the operation phase in order to keep the components at the desired operational condition. The variance between designers’ and facility managers’ priorities concerning maintainability creates a gap between the design and operation phases. Maintainability is not often considered in design nor is it a priority for designers. Designers consider equipment access to be one of the least important factors related to maintenance. However, design-related maintainability issues such as equipment access problems make maintenance activities impractical if not impossible in facility operation, and increase the life cycle costs of facilities. These issues can be detected in the design phase if an appropriate tool is available, and can prevent maintenance-related problems in the operation phase. This research aims to bridge the gap between design and facility management by developing and deploying a BIM tool that brings a facility management perspective into design, and allows designers to inject maintainability considerations into the design phase. In this study, the building and construction codes and standards adopted and published by the local governments of the United States were investigated in order to identify maintainability standards related to geometric design and parametric information of building components. Parametric rule sets related to maintainability were established according to the codes and standards. From the “equipment access” perspective, a maintainability checking algorithm that can be easily customized for any building component and its rule sets was developed. In order to demonstrate the operation of the algorithm in 3D design view, the algorithm was customized for a particular piece of equipment, codded in C# programing language, and implemented as an add-in called “Maintainability Checker” to the most commonly used BIM software: Revit. A video clip of the demonstration was embedded into a questionnaire, and the questionnaire was administrated to designers and facility managers in order to validate the potential benefits of “Maintainability Checker”. A comparative analysis of designers’ and facility managers’ opinions towards maintainability and “Maintainability Checker” was conducted using SPSS. The survey results indicate that the gap between the design and post-construction phases does exist. However, the survey results also indicate that “Maintainability Checker” can bridge the gap by allowing designers to produce a better design that improves equipment maintenance access and workplace safety, facilitates the cleaning and repair of building components, reduces the number of reworks, improves the efficiency of the commissioning process, and reduces the time spent on maintenance activities, all without increasing the workload of designers. The construction industry should consider an automated maintainability check to be an essential part of the design process, create/adopt design for maintainability standards for every building component that can possibly be in a structure, and use them within BIM tools.