7D BIM: Sustainability

Sustainability is a concept that is used quite frequently today, but is not always understood correctly. The concept of sustainability is to use resources in a way that does not harm or endanger the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It’s about finding ways to live and prosper without causing environmental degradation or depletion of natural resources.

Buildings consume high energy throughout their entire life cycle and cause high carbon emissions. High-Performance Building and Net-Zero Energy Building approaches have emerged in the construction industry to reduce the energy need of buildings.

Picture 1: Green Building Concept

BIM can be used in many different ways to improve sustainability in buildings:

•  BIM allows us to simulate the energy performance of a building at the project stage, enabling us to design energy-efficient structures.
•  BIM can be used to select construction materials with a lower environmental impact. BIM assesses the embodied energy and global warming potential of different materials, helping to select products with a smaller ecological footprint.
•  BIM can be used to evaluate the feasibility of renewable energy systems. BIM can help determine whether a particular site is suitable for solar panels or wind turbines by modeling factors such as sun exposure, wind speed and shading.
•  By enabling the creation of digital twins of structures, BIM can help verify that sustainable buildings are functioning as intended by monitoring energy use, water consumption and waste generation throughout a building’s lifecycle.
•  BIM coordinates cost planning, design, construction and production. It also enables manufacturers to create more accurate features off-site. As a result, the amount of waste is minimized, overordering is avoided and natural resources are conserved.

Picture 2 : Tracking the sunlight hitting the building during the day.

Various structures using sustainable BIM in the design process:

• Istanbul Airport

The airport, designed using BIM, also includes a rainwater harvesting system that collects and recycles rainwater for use in toilets and irrigation, a gray water treatment plant that recycles water from sinks and showers for use in landscape irrigation, and a solar energy system that balances the airport’s energy consumption by 10%. It has many sustainable design elements, including

• Baku National Stadium

The stadium was built with the BIM methodology and designed to be as energy efficient as possible. The stadium’s roof is made of ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene), a highly translucent material that helps reduce energy consumption by allowing natural light to enter the stadium. The stadium also has a rainwater harvesting system that collects rainwater and recycles it for use in the stadium’s toilets and irrigation system.
The number of BIM-based applications in the world is increasing rapidly, regulations have been published in many countries on this subject. In Turkey, on the other hand, preparations for regulations are made in this regard. In our country, BIM is actively used in many qualified projects, especially in airports, rail systems and hospitals.
Thanks to our BIMCRONE product, which was developed with the BIM approach, which enables the production of better projects with process optimization and enables sustainable practices in the construction sector, we continue to serve in this field as the industry leader on both a national and international scale.

Furkan Semih DEVECİ