Improving sustainability of building operation and maintenance (O&M) process through ontologies: an introductory framework

Nowadays, the need to activate sustainable building processes has become even more important, considering the scarcity of raw materials, the worrying levels of pollution, and the need to optimise the potential of existing buildings, to save material and natural resources. For this reason, it is important to define innovative strategies and methodologies to optimise the Operation & Maintenance phases of buildings lifecycle, which represent an important percentage of energy consumption in the overall life cycle cost. This study therefore aims to link the building’s BIM model with the information related to the maintenance phases and activities, directly using the APIs of the information modelling tools, limiting the loss of data related to the use of interoperability protocols. The results achieved show how it is possible to establish this direct communication between database and the model, and to extend this possibility to on-site operators as well. For this, we find limitations related to the internet network capabilities, that is still not totally adequate to support such a high IT load, and to set up maintenance cycles according to an IoT approach. Future developments of this study include the introduction of statistical techniques into the presented framework, in order to make maintenance activities even more efficient, since this would make it possible to plan intervention cycles more precisely, and to use fewer areas as storage of spare parts, thanks to a more accurate prediction of the failure rate of the components.