BIMaterial – Process Design for a BIM-based Material Building Passport

Buildings and infrastructure represent the largest material stock in modern industrial societies today. From a global perspective, these urban warehouses are already reaching a similar scale to economically exploitable primary raw material deposits. In order to counteract the further exploitation of natural resources, the value retention, reuse and recycling of these stocks is becoming a central economic goal.

BIMaterial develops digital planning tools that record, analyse and optimise the entire material life cycle of a building – from planning and use to demolition. At the heart of this is the BIM-based material building passport (MGP), a forward-looking instrument for managing resource efficiency and recyclability in the construction industry.

Why BIMaterial?

• Cities as material stores: developing precise tools for inventorying and recycling urban raw materials
• Integrating circular principles early on in the planning phase
• Using BIM workflows for ecological, material and economic assessments
• Promoting reuse through transparent material documentation and demolition planning

Project description

The aim of BIMaterial is to design and prototype a digital process design for the creation of material building passports (MGP) based on BIM data models.

The MGP performs several key functions:

• Planning and optimisation tool for resource-efficient use of materials and demountable design
• Documentation basis for recycling and reuse at the end of the life cycle
• Data source for urban raw material registers at neighbourhood or city level

The project developed a structured methodology for creating BIM-based MGPs. This involved linking digital tool chains, in particular:

• BIM models,
• ecological assessment databases,
• recycling databases,
• and the material analysis tool BuildingOne.

The workflow developed enables a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the material composition of a building and its ecological footprint – directly in the planning process.

Vision

BIMaterial stands for circular construction with digital precision. The material building passport creates transparency about the materials used, enables ecological optimisation in early design phases and forms the basis for a resource-efficient demolition culture. The project thus makes a key contribution to establishing circular material flows in an urban context – data-based, standardisable and scalable.