A formal approach for managing facility change information and capturing change history as part of building information models (BIMs)

This research specifically addresses two challenges associated with the current approaches of maintaining facility information. First, records of the work done are incomplete and inaccurate since changes happening to a facility as a result of daily maintenance and repairs are not captured systematically. As a result. facility information cannot be updated regularly and remains outdated. Capturing information about the work performed and resulting changes is challenging, since information items necessary to be recorded after each maintenance and repair work vary based on the nature of the work. Thus, a formal approach is needed to identify the information necessary to be captured in relation to changes and to streamline capturing changes during operations. Such an approach should be able to provide history of changes to facility maintenance personnel and help in updating facility information. Second. facility information remains outdated due to additional expenses (added to facility operation costs) and efforts needed for updating existing documents. and as the decisions on when to update facility information are ad-hoc. Updating facility information is challenging because a complete history is not available and as there are limited approaches for leveraging change history for deciding when to update. Such change history is necessary to support decisions of when to update for reducing update frequencies, and to provide the necessary information for the updates without the need for re-collecting the change information. Therefore, a formal approach is necessary for analyzing the patterns of changes and the work performed in a facility. in order to streamline the identification of the update needs in support of facility information updates and update frequency reduction. Such an approach should be able to assist in identifying the problems in the facility that need attention, based on the history, for supporting maintenance planning and prioritizing.;In order to address challenges and needs stated above. I developed a formalism for: (I) customized capturing of facility change information in relation to maintenance and repair work; and (2) analysis of the M&R work change history in a model-based facility information repository to spatially query changes and M&R work information for supporting update need recognition and maintenance planning. The objectives of the work included: (I) identification and classification of information that is necessary to be collected in relation to M&R work and facility changes; (2) development of customized information capture templates for recording M&R work changes in the field, and (3) identification and development of representation and reasoning approaches for linking and analyzing M&R changes with a BIM, in order to support identification of patterns for model update needs and M&R work planning.;The research methods involved an industry survey, formal case studies and direct observation of maintenance and repair process and facility documents, and current maintenance management systems (e.g., CMMS) for identifying and classifying information necessary to be captured in relation to M&R work and facility changes. It also included investigation and analyses of standards (e.g., WC, RS Means, COBie), and research approaches. Data collected during case studies and from digital maintenance records were used for classifying changes & M&R work and developing customized field data capture templates. Other research tasks/methods included prototyping for customized template generation and linking change history to BIM, reasoning about change history through queries and identifying clusters within BIM to identify BIM/facility information update needs and assist in maintenance planning. Validation studies included: (1) validating the coverage of the M&R change taxonomy and formalized templates by performing case studies and cross-comparison of change and maintenance data from different facilities; (2) validating the value of taxonomy and generality of the queries by user studies/interviews and prototyping. The user tests were performed with real FM personnel working in FMS departments and CMMS software providers, and graduate students who are doing research in the area. In these user-tests, participants demonstrated the prototype systems and answered a survey accordingly.;The contributions of the research include: (1) classification and capturing of facility changes associated with maintenance and repair work; (2) formalization of generation of customized templates for capturing field work and changes; (3) identification of useful/preferred queries for update needs; (4) querying M&R work and change history with BIM to support identifying patterns for model update needs. The expected practical implications include supporting of capturing of information in the field in relation to facility changes associated with M&R work and assisting in identifying spatial clusters of previous M&R work and changes for update need recognition and maintenance support. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).