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International Journal of Construction Management
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BIM applications in sustainable construction:
scientometric and state-of-the-art review
Hamed Ferdosi, Hamidreza Abbasianjahromi, Saeed Banihashemi & Mehdi
Ravanshadnia
To cite this article: Hamed Ferdosi, Hamidreza Abbasianjahromi, Saeed Banihashemi &
Mehdi Ravanshadnia (2022): BIM applications in sustainable construction: scientometric
and state-of-the-art review, International Journal of Construction Management, DOI:
10.1080/15623599.2022.2029679
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15623599.2022.2029679
Published online: 27 Jan 2022.
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BIM applications in sustainable construction: scientometric and state-of-the-
art review
Hamed Ferdosi
a
, Hamidreza Abbasianjahromi
b
, Saeed Banihashemi
c
and Mehdi Ravanshadnia
a
a
Department of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Art, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran;
b
Civil Engineering
Department, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran;
c
School of Design and Built Environment, Faculty of Arts and Design, University
of Canberra (UC), Canberra, Australia
ABSTRACT
The construction sector is notorious for being unsustainable and disintegrated industry while, it is crucial
to provide a lens towards sustainable construction from the digital innovation and integration perspec-
tive. Although a considerable amount of research has been focused on how building information model-
ing (BIM) helps improve sustainable construction; there are still a limited number of studies that have
investigated the BIM process in sustainability fields. This study aims to identify all common domains of
BIM and sustainability applications and reveals the academic and practice gaps in the construction
industry. Through employing the scientometric analysis method, a collective number of 188 journal
articles were gathered and analyzed. The thematic analysis was then applied and five common domains
of BIM and sustainability on lifecycle assessment, green buildings criteria, energy analysis, environmental
assessments and design, construction and project management were eventually identified. The current
study identifies the research confusion, neglect and application gaps across all five identified domains
and provides researchers with a deep understanding of BIM in the sustainability and future directions
for further research.
KEYWORDS
BIM; sustainability;
scientometric; thematic
analysis; sustainable
construction
Introduction
The construction sector plays a significant role in the spread of
environmental pollution throughout the world, as such, in the
United States, buildings are accounted for 39% of primary energy
consumption, 40% of raw materials consumption, and 38% of CO2
emissions (Ozcan-Deniz and Zhu 2017). Therefore, it is highly cru-
cial to promote novel and sustainable building techniques in the
construction field. On a global scale, investing in sustainable devel-
opment is essential to reduce the global warming potential within
the built environment. Several authors have defined sustainability as
constructing buildings with minimal environmental impacts (El-
Diraby et al. 2017), or other researchers have defined it by realizing
efficiency improvement in construction processes (Pignataro et al.
2014). Currently, sustainable development is defined to include sev-
eral features, such as being economically dynamic and productive,
environmentally non-destructive, in accordance with social justice
and acceptable, and technologically appropriate (Shen et al. 2011).
However, a reasonable level of sustainable design can be incorpo-
rated into most building types with minimal or no additional costs
(Dwaikat and Ali 2016).
Since digital tools play a vital role in sustainability domains
by providing data integration platforms and reducing waste,
greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumptions (Gharouni
et al. 2021), emerging new technologies by digital aids help to
reach sustainable industries. Over the recent years, new technolo-
gies, such as BIM, have been introduced to develop sustainable
construction design (Ahmadian et al. 2017). BIM provides essen-
tial data and information for projects and encompasses several
valuable functions for building performance analysis method
(Liu et al. 2015), materials and resources, energy and atmos-
phere, sustainable sites, indoor environmental quality, and innov-
ation (Mirpanahi and Noorzai 2021). In contrast, Volk et al.
(2014) has declared that BIM as a technology/methodology ena-
bles the integration of information and promotes the collabora-
tive environment throughout the design; additionally, it extends
the life cycle of a building. Consequently, studies about sustain-
able building design have naturally become more methodical
(Liu et al. 2015). Combining BIM and LCA affects energy effi-
ciency and the life cycle cost of building for designers and plan-
ners in the early stages of design and decision making (Abbasi
and Noorzai 2021).
In this study, it has been attempted to answer the follow-
ing questions:
1. What is the current contribution state of studies to the role
of BIM in sustainability?
2. What are the current themes of integration for BIM and
sustainability domain?
The first question is investigated by utilizing a scientometric
analysis to determine the degree of diffusion, dispersion, and the
status of BIM studies and sustainability. The second question is
answered based on the thematic analysis and identification of
common domains of the BIM processes towards sustainability.
Hence, following the background and introduction on the topic,
the section ‘Material and methods’describes the research meth-
ods and shows the research workflow, which includes the explan-
ation of the scientometrics and thematic analysis. The section
‘Results of scientometric analysis’presents the statistical informa-
tion and findings of the Scientometric analysis. In order to
explore the common areas of BIM and sustainability, section
CONTACT Hamidreza Abbasianjahromi habasian@kntu.ac.ir
ß2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/15623599.2022.2029679
‘Results of thematic analysis’addresses the results of the thematic
analysis, incorporated with the gap analysis to discuss the voids
of the literature and propose future works. The obtained results
are then compared with the literature to develop the discussion.
Ultimately, the conclusion section sums up the study.
Material and methods
As this study was intended to adopt the state-of-the-art review,
the search term is focused on the studies published from 2015 to
the end of June 2021 in the domains of BIM and sustainability,
which have been published in the seminal databases as Scopus
and Web of Science (WoS). The overall review workflow has
been illustrated in Figure 1. The proposed methodology includes
the data collection, screening, thematical and scientometric ana-
lysis of the identified data and findings.
Data collection
The entire data collection process has included two steps.
Initially, two academic databases, namely Scopus, and WoS, were
utilized to identify the journals with the largest number of corre-
sponding papers. Scopus and WOS were selected because they
cover a wider range of peer-reviewed journals and they are two
bibliographic databases generally accepted as the most compre-
hensive data sources for various purposes.(Zhu and Liu 2020).
Searching the literature was started from entering the following
keywords in Scopus and WoS: ’("building information modeling"
OR "BIM") AND sustainability’. The mentioned keywords were
applied in the ’title/abstract/keyword’fields under the construc-
tion categories or similar ones and 685 papers were identified.
Screening
Conference papers were excluded since they did not provide as
much essential information as the journal articles (Butler and
Visser 2006). The results were limited to the first of 2015 till the
end of June 2021, and the research and review papers presented
in the English language. The citation number of a journal article
is frequently considered as a critical index to assess the research
quality of the mentioned journal (Hu, Chan et al. 2015) and the
Quartile Index (Q) is generally exploited for this purpose. In this
regard, it represents the position of a corresponding journal in
its specialized field and is divided into four parts. The Q1 index
indicates that the journal rank is in the first quarter in that
research domain. Thus, based on this criterion, the procedure
was performed based on searching for the name of the journal
in the Scimago database, and subsequently, selecting Q1 journals.
Consequently, 414 articles were obtained and based on a manual
review, and according to the keywords and abstracts, duplicated
and unrelated studies were removed. After conducting a manual
review, 188 papers were collectively fixed for the analysis.
Data analysis
At this stage, the obtained papers were reviewed through the two
methods of scientometric and thematic analysis, as explained in
the following sections.
Scientometric analysis
The analysis of scientometrics utilizing statistical and mathemat-
ical methods refers to the quantitative analysis of the knowledge
fields in a specific subject and by considering a large number of
papers (Hou et al. 2018). The scientometric analysis involves the
keywords co-occurrence, author co-citation, document co-cit-
ation, and other parameters (Chen 2017). VOSViewer version
1.6.15 was adopted in the present study to conduct the sciento-
metric analysis since it is appropriate for visualizing a large
amount of data and has special text-mining features (Eck and
Waltman 2014). The citation information of the studies was
acquired in the CSV format and entered into the VOSViewer.
For scientometric analysis, initially, the journals were analyzed
according to the number of published studies and the number of
citations; afterward, the studies were analyzed based on their
number of received citations. In the next step, the co-occurrence
of the keywords of the article was investigated, and the authors
Figure 1. The overall review workflow.
2 H. FERDOSI ET AL.
were, then, inspected according to the co-authorship with each
other. Eventually, the countries that are active in BIM and sus-
tainability were examined. The colors in all of the science maps
represent different clusters created by relationships between data
and cross-references.
Thematic analysis
According to Figure 1, the analysis of the themes is the final step
in the process of the current research data. Thematic analysis is
an approach to identify, analyze, and report patterns in the form
of qualitative data. This method is a designated process for ana-
lyzing textual data which converts scattered and varied data into
a rich and detailed database. This approach is a qualitative ana-
lysis that, unlike other qualitative methods, does not use a prede-
termined framework to obtain themes, but in which, the texts
are examined and coded, and the themes are, then, created by
categorizing the codes (Braun and Clarke 2006). With this
respect, Maxqda version 18.2.0 software program was applied to
conduct the thematic analysis in which the papers were skimmed
and, the codes were assigned to the texts. By scrutinizing of the
body, the obtained themes were categorized into distinct groups.
After identifying the distinct groups, the Level of Details (LOD)
analysis was conducted. LOD as an industry standard shows the
level of details applied in a BIM model. For identifying the LoD
application, the papers were scanned and the studies that used
simulation or case studies were checked for the details of BIM
modeling based on the LoD definition.
In the final part of this section, the gap analysis was con-
ducted in order to discover future research directions, according
to Sandberg and Alvesson (2011). There are three particular
modes of gap analysis which are titled as confusion, neglect, and
application. The confusion gap is the identification of some sort
of confusion in the existing body of knowledge that is the main
focus of this strategy. The neglect gap considers three versions of
spotting an overlooked area, an under-researched area, and a
lack of empirical support. The application gap is an area in the
existing body of knowledge in which a shortage of an exact the-
ory or a distinct perspective in a particular domain of research is
targeted (Sandberg and Alvesson 2011).
Results of scientometric analysis
The trend of publishing articles
In the Figure 2, the number of published papers in the time
period of 2015–end of June 2021, and in the selected literature
sample are displayed. The data represent the overall trend of
research outputs in BIM and sustainability fields during the past
six years as of the end of June 2021. By considering the data in
2016 as an exception, the annual number of publications has
been generally increased since 2015, from 9 total papers pub-
lished annually in 2015 and 2016 to 38 papers to the end of June
2021. The mentioned fact indicates that the research community,
given the issue of sustainability and global warming, has
increased its interests and research in the BIM application in
sustainability through recent years.
Journals analysis
In the present section, the journals publishing BIM and
Sustainability studies are analyzed. The minimum number of
domain threshold was set at 3 studies, and the minimum
intended number of citations was set at 30 in VOSViewer. As a
consequence, 10 journals were obtained from a set of 38 jour-
nals. The clusters of journal sources and their interrelationships
through connection lines have been displayed in Figure 3. In this
figure, the size and the font of the nodes represent the number
of publications from the given journals; therefore, larger font
and node sizes are indicating the larger numbers of publications.
According to the achieved results, it is observed that the Journal
of Sustainability (Switzerland) with 56 published papers and the
Journal of Automation in Construction with 902 citations have
the highest number of published papers and the highest citations,
respectively, among all assessed publications.
Articles analysis
The most influential published studies in the determined journals
have been analyzed. The minimum citations number was set at
80; accordingly, 13 papers were obtained, and the results have
been demonstrated in Table 1. Most of the mentioned papers
were published in the Journal of Cleaner Production and the
journal of Automation in Construction. Regarding the obtained
results, the highly cited authors are Wong and Zhou (2015),
Doan et al. (2019) and Lu et al. (2017) receiving 255, 193 and
176 citations, respectively. Figure 4 shows the clusters of articles’
sources and their interrelationships and Figure 5 demonstrates
the distribution of articles shown in Table 1, by the country
of authors.
Co-occurrence of keywords analysis
Keywords represent the main content of available studies and
indicate the topics that have been considered in a particular field.
For identifying the main keywords of the field, the minimum
occurrence of a keyword was set at 15. Initially, 25 out of 1554
keywords met the defined threshold and same semantic meaning
items were removed, e.g., "Construction", "Buildings", "BIM" and
"Sustainability"; ultimately, a total of 11 keywords were acquired
and depicted as a science mapping in Figure 6. Additionally, the
corresponding quantitative data were presented in Table 2.In
this table, keywords, occurrence, the publication year, and the
average citations can also be observed. According to the achieved
results, “Architectural design", "Information theory", "Life cycle"
and "Decision making " were applied more than other keywords
that shows the importance and application of these issues in
integrating the areas of BIM and sustainability. Despite the lower
number of occurrences, it can be concluded that these are the
most vital and frequent domains of BIM and sustainability.
Figure 2. The trend of publishing studies in the common research domains of
BIM and sustainability.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 3
Co-authorship analysis
Collaboration in a research field can significantly improve the
productivity (Hosseini et al. 2018). In order to analyze the co-
authorship, the minimum number of published papers was set at
4, and the minimum citations for a researcher were set at 30.
Correspondingly, 14 authors from a set of 549 authors were
obtained based on the threshold. The acquired results have been
revealed by the science map in Figure 7. It can be noted that in
Figure 7, the mentioned authors were divided into three catego-
ries. The authors who cited each other fall into the same cat-
egory. Based on the achieved results, Chan d.w.m, Olawumi. t.o
with publishing 6 papers and llatas c. with 188 citations, respect-
ively, benefit from the highest number of published papers and
the highest citations among all authors.
Countries active in BIM and sustainability research
Participant countries in the research field of BIM and sustainability
were investigated in the current section. Therefore, the minimum
numbers for documents and citations of a country were set at 5
and 100, respectively. The defined threshold resulted in a total
number of 16 out of 52 listed countries. The science mapping of
countriesisdemonstratedinFigure 8.Theconnectionlinesin
Figure 8 represent the mutual citations of studies among various
countries. In this regard, Lithuania has no reciprocal citations with
other countries; thus, it is not linked to other countries on the
map. According to Table 6, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and
China, with 36, 23, and 20 papers, constitute the most publications,
respectively. In Figure 9, the countries have been divided into three
colors based on their number of publications and have been dis-
played on a map of the planet.
Results of thematic analysis
To provide the response to the posed questions in the present
review, 188 articles were examined by utilizing the thematic ana-
lysis method. Finding the common domains of BIM and sustain-
ability works, their related LOD, and identifying the gaps are the
Figure 3. Science mapping of mainstream journals in the shared research domains of BIM and sustainability.
Table 1. Quantitative data of the authorship in the BIM and sustainability research fields.
Authors Title Cited Journal
Wong and Zhou (2015) Enhancing environmental sustainability overbuilding life cycles through green
BIM: A review
255 Automation in construction
Doan, Ghaffarianhoseini et al. (2019) A critical comparison of green building rating systems 193 Building and environment
Lu, Wu et al. (2017) Building Information Modeling (BIM) for green buildings: A critical review and
future directions
176 Automation in construction
Soust-Verdaguer, Llatas et al. (2017) A critical review of BIM-based LCA method to buildings 170 Energy and buildings
Chong et al. (2017) A mixed review of the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) for
sustainability
163 Journal of cleaner production
Abanda and Byers (2016) An investigation of the impact of building orientation on energy consumption
in a domestic building using emerging BIM
162 Energy
Eleftheriadis et al. (2017) Life cycle energy efficiency in building structures: A review of current
developments and future outlooks based on BIM capability
112 Renewable and sustainable
energy reviews
Jalaei and Jrade (2015) Integrating building information modeling (BIM) and LEED system at the
conceptual design stage of sustainable buildings
104 Sustainable cities and society
Alwan et al. (2017) Strategic sustainable development in the UK construction industry, through the
framework for strategic sustainable development
103 Journal of cleaner production
Shadram and Mukkavaara (2018) An integrated BIM-based framework for minimizing embodied energy during
building design
103 Energy and buildings
Ilhan and Yaman (2016) Green building assessment tool (GBAT) for integrated BIM-based
design decisions
98 Automation in construction
R€
ock, Hollberg et al. (2018) LCA and BIM: Visualization of environmental potentials in building construction
at early design stages
93 Building and environment
Liu, Meng et al. (2015) Building information modeling-based building design optimization for
sustainability
81 Energy and buildings
4 H. FERDOSI ET AL.
Figure 4. Science mapping of the authorship in the BIM and sustainability research fields.
Figure 5. Countries of the authors of top papers in the domains of BIM and sustainability.
Figure 6. The science mapping of keywords in the BIM and sustainability research fields.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 5
main contributions and results of conducting thematic analysis.
The following subsections explain them in more details:
Common domains of BIM and sustainability
As mentioned in the methodology, the thematic analysis process
was commenced with coding the text of the retrieved works.
According to the coding system, 17 themes were initially formed
and reviewed, and those that did not include the shared domains
of BIM and sustainability were removed. Subsequently, the find-
ings were classified according to the definitions and their appli-
cations. The outcome of this process is the acquired common
domains of BIM and sustainability that can be divided into 5
main categories, demonstrated in Figure 10.
BIM, sustainability and life cycle assessment
This category covers all themes corresponding to the triple bot-
tom line of sustainability. The sustainability category here
includes social and economic sustainability, and life cycle assess-
ment (LCA).
Related information of the sustainability field such as user
comfort, indoor air quality, noise pollution, safety at the con-
struction site, more precise and less disturbing operations on
municipal infrastructure are continuously collected and analyzed
thanks to BIM technique. These information can be further
transformed into social interaction by involving occupants in set-
ting common sustainability goals for their buildings, monitoring
progress, and celebrating achievements (Reizgevi
cius et al. 2018).
One of the social benefits of BIM applications is their significant
role in evaluating the user comfort level in buildings. In the
same vein, safety is another significant part of the social sustain-
ability in which BIM, through the schedule management (also
known as 4 D BIM) and integrating geometric information with
schedule, materials, and time information (based on historical
data), can improve the safety analysis of building projects
(Santos et al. 2019).
BIM affects economic sustainability in the phase of design by
reducing the soft project costs (such as administration, over-
heads, and services), improving the design and construction pro-
cess, and the decision-making (Ahmad and Thaheem 2017). The
economic advantages that BIM proposes for investors are includ-
ing the early detection of potential clashes, better engineering
decisions, more efficient logistics and precised ex-ante calculation
of costs throughout the whole life cycle of an asset, among the
other benefits (Reizgevi
cius et al. 2018). BIM provides the basis
for the uncertainty analysis of the economic risks due to land
sliding in urban areas using advanced statistical tools, integrated
settlement economic risk assessment using building damage, and
integrated settlement economic risk assessments (Providakis
et al. 2020). BIM can be also used to manage the cost of a pro-
ject during construction and its integration with LCA can help
the economic control and reduce reworks (Kaewunruen et al.
2020; Marrero et al. 2020). Considering the flexibility of BIM
models towards design changes, different design variants can be
easily generated, providing the opportunity to develop cost-
effective designs (M
es
aro
s et al. 2021).
BIM supports the LCA to reduce the environmental impacts
of materials and improve the environmental performance of
buildings (Najjar et al. 2019; Mohammed 2019). The BIM tech-
nique is regarded as a valuable tool during the operation phase
by energy simulation (Gan et al. 2018), and it can develop a
more cooperative and efficient material recycling plan for the
calculation of recycling practices and environmental impacts
assessment (Wong and Zhou 2015; Muller et al. 2019). BIM-
LCA integration approaches refer to the early design modeling
that provides the selection of green materials, as well as the
selection of suitable products during the occupation stage and
the remaining service life of buildings (Mora et al. 2020; Santos
et al. 2020).
Table 2. Quantitative representation of the frequent keywords in BIM and sus-
tainability research fields.
Keywords Occurrence
Average Year
Published
Average
Citations
Architectural design 119 2019 32.3
Information theory 55 2018 48.3
Life cycle 55 2019 41.4
Decision making 36 2019 26.6
Environmental impact 34 2019 36.8
Energy efficiency 29 2018 23.3
Energy utilization 27 2018 35.6
Life cycle assessment (LCA) 26 2019 37.1
Green buildings 22 2018 49.6
Eco design 18 2018 38.2
Figure 7. Co-authorship analysis in the shared research domain of BIM and sustainability.
6 H. FERDOSI ET AL.
Figure 8. Active countries in the common research domain of BIM and sustainability.
Figure 9. Dispersion of the active countries in the shared research field of BIM and sustainability.
Figure 10. Common domains of BIM and sustainability.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 7
BIM and green buildings criteria and assessment
This category includes the studies that integrate BIM with build-
ings sustainability criteria. Green buildings and rating system are
two themes considered in this category.
BIM facilitates documentation management required to apply
for the rating; furthermore, project participants can ensure that
the building design, construction, and operation follow such cer-
tification requirements (Lu et al. 2017). The BIM process pro-
vides convenience for the access to building information, and it
has been utilized to facilitate intelligent green building evaluation
(Jiang et al. 2018) and simulation functions of green building
(Lin et al. 2019). BIM can also provide information to support
the calculation of a number of credit points to define the levels
of sustainability associated with green building rating systems
(Maskil-Leitan et al. 2020).
BIM can automatically rate green buildings, delivering out-
comes in a highly accurate rating in comparison with the trad-
itional assessment methods (Nguyen et al. 2016). The review
indicates that BIM plays a significant role in the Green Star
achievement. Various BIM tools can be used to achieve Green
Star criteria. For example, IES Virtual Environment, Transys,
Ecotect and AnTherm can be adopted to obtain the indoor air
quality criterion; in this regard, it is a priority to gain a high
score in Green Star conditions (GhaffarianHoseini, Tien Doan
et al. 2017). BIM tools such as the ERGON module of IES-VE
can model real operational data and by utilizing its integrated
processes, the requirements of the LEED standard can be ana-
lyzed and evaluated from various aspects such as daylight,
reduced consumption of water, and other utilities (Ansah et al.
2019). Finally, BIM is applied to examine building envelopes for
achieving the sustainability standards of construction projects
(Najjar et al. 2019).
BIM, energy analysis, lighting analysis and building
performance
There are six themes of energy consumption, energy perform-
ance, energy modeling, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning
(HVAC), lighting analysis and building performance, in
this group.
BIM helps providing energy savings through the combination
of accurate energy monitoring, real-time decision support sys-
tems, and actuators and identification of consumption patterns.
Moreover, (a) the reliance on a semantic approach (i.e., BIM,
real-time data analysis, behavior modeling, etc.); (b) enhanced
supervision of energy flows and use in buildings; and (c) new
partnerships between energy managers, energy distributors,
energy equipment suppliers, and technology (including smart
software tools), inform the optimal management on the evolu-
tion of energy use in buildings, and result in quantifiable energy
consumption reduction (Petri et al. 2017). Kim and Yu (2016)
developed a BIM-based model to extract the required data (e.g.,
building stories, building elements, and materials) for the auto-
mated calculation of the energy load from IFCXML from BIM
model. The application of a BIM-based energy management
model in the early stages of the building life cycle ensures the
selection of the most appropriate energy-efficient solution
(Ustinovichius et al. 2018). BIM allows facility managers and
end-users to quantify the amount of energy, and optimize energy
consumption by balancing embodied and operation energy
(Abbasi and Noorzai 2021). Data and information captured by
BIM can respond swiftly and appropriately to increase the occu-
pants’comfort and reduce buildings energy consumption
(Galiano-Garrig
os et al. 2019; Fokaides et al. 2020; Brahmi et al.
2021; Carvalho et al. 2021).
BIM can support the energy performance by designing and
evaluating all of the used materials and the entire building life
cycle (Azzi et al. 2015). Integrating BIM model and the internet
of things (IoT) provides the complete geometric description of
the building, allowing a more direct approach of the user to 3 D
visualization, and ensuring a greater perception of the energy
consumption (Mataloto et al. 2021).
Moreover, BIM tools such as Autodesk REVIT output files
(IFC, gbXML) are converted to GBS files to be applied in energy
modeling software such as EnergyPlus or eQuest. The delivered
integration makes energy modeling more efficient to stabilize
systems performances of construction projects, reduce energy
requirements, and analyze renewable energy options (Pezeshki
et al. 2019; Abanda and Byers 2016; Garwood et al. 2018). The
BIM process attends to all related information of the construc-
tion project. All of these layers of information are integrated into
a BIM file that can be applied for energy simulations and further
accessed by project owners at any time and from any place
(Chihib et al. 2019). Autodesk Revit is one of the BIM author-
ing tools that can perform energy analysis in the parametric
environment through its output data. The most sustainable
measures from energy-saving and efficiency point of view, the
potential of applying BIM 6 D models can be applied for energy
simulation (Montiel-Santiago et al. 2020).
BIM is applied for the ventilation analysis and optimization
purposes of reducing buildings energy consumption and increas-
ing the thermal comfort level. The BIM software can estimate
the potential capacity for HVAC (Lu et al. 2017) and help build-
ing’s interior design provide a proper relationship between
spaces that prevailing winds crosse the rooms and proper air
renovation, especially in summers (Galiano-Garrig
os et al. 2019).
Additionally, through using BIM analysis tools and leveraging
the capacity of BIM for data exchange between modeling and
thermal simulation tools in various formats, such as IFC and
gbXML, it is feasible to calculate buildings thermal simulator.
This includes the items such as thermodynamic model capabil-
ities, graphical user interfaces, the purpose of use, life-cycle
applicability, building thermal dynamic analysis, thermal loads,
and thermal consumption rate of a building (Shoubi et al. 2015;
Edwards et al. 2019).
BIM analysis provides the effects of lighting on the exterior
and interior of buildings, which can be used to determine and
visualize the optimal location of Photovoltaics installation in a
building envelope and help designers and engineers understand
and optimize the sun’s impact on buildings (Lu et al. 2017;
Fitriaty and Shen 2018). BIM models through IFC data can be
integrated with lighting devices and the brightness of room/space
and the glare index (reflection) on the various surfaces can be
calculated, accordingly (Mazzoli et al. 2021).
BIM supports building performance analysis (BPA) in the
design stage for daylighting and testing the interior visual com-
fort. Furthermore, it adjusts HVAC with building systems,
improves the air quality through the airflow analysis and calcu-
lates the energy consumption based on building’s geometry (Jin
et al. 2019).
BIM and environmental assessments
The environmental assessment category includes waste manage-
ment, facility management, and carbon emission analysis as the
main sub-themes.
8 H. FERDOSI ET AL.
The construction waste can be minimized through applying
BIM in different ways. BIM is applied as the information hub
and integrated with optimization algorithms to minimize struc-
tural reinforcement wastes. It can be also used to provide bills of
materials of a manually predetermined design for materials waste
analysis and reduction (Liu et al. 2019; Santos et al. 2019). All of
the wasted materials such as materials types, volume, source,
classification, code, verification documents, data, time of col-
lected waste, and received facilities can be recorded and identi-
fied (Ge et al. 2017). BIM helps construction managers alleviate
different causes of waste generation, such as clashing structural
and mechanical elements, prevent over supply of raw materials,
minimize damages during delivery, and reduce the need to order
non-standard sizes of building modules (Zoghi and Kim 2020).
BIM has proven numerous benefits in the fields of architec-
ture, engineering and construction and facility management
(FM), by considering the integration power of BIM software
with databases and other FM tools. It can fill the gaps that exist
between designers, builders, owners, and operators, by designing
and managing a sustainable green building facility throughout its
life and identifying the most functional opportunities for
improving the implementation of green buildings and carbon
reduction (Khan and Ahmed 2017; Ashworth et al. 2019).
Furthermore, BIM combines different parameters and infor-
mation to generate a dynamic carbon footprint prediction model.
BIM is applied to predict the amount of CO2 emitted during the
operation phase (Gardezi and Shafiq 2019) by using the informa-
tion such as local emissions, hydrocarbon production at the con-
struction site, and other energy conversion approaches (Lu
et al. 2017).
BIM and design, construction and project management
This category covers the studies that include design, decision
making, and project management themes. BIM design tools pro-
vide a platform to incorporate existing building plans into a
common digital platform for all stakeholders. It creates the
required potential for innovation by providing more creative
designs and optimized engineering solutions and preferable
methods to satisfy customers and new businesses. BIM tools can
assist designers to analyze how a building should perform even
in the very early stages of the design. The utilization of the BIM
process for building design purposes can significantly improve
sustainable design decisions and minimize the unsustainable
practices through its integrated design tools (Edwards et al.
2019). BIM accelerates the construction of collaborative design
platforms and greatly improves the design quality (Huang et al.
2021). BIM can support the design of building sustainability as
follows: (i) assessing buildings orientation; (ii) analyzing the
massing; (iii) conducting daylighting analysis; (iv) investigating
the water harvesting potential; (v) modeling building energy per-
formance; (vi) examining the suitability of sustainable materials,
and (vii) designing site and logistics management (Bueno and
Fabricio 2018). BIM offers the possibility to assess different
design alternatives at the conceptual stage of a project and helps
structural designers select the right type of materials during the
early design stage (Vilutiene et al. 2020).
Project planning, construction progress monitoring, and deci-
sion-making are all supported by BIM models (Tibaut and
Zazula 2018). It is providing the necessary opportunities to link
different aspects and large amounts of information in a shared
database (R€
ock et al. 2018), and can be applied to support the
decision-making for component selection during the design pro-
cess (Charef et al. 2018). BIM can be integrated with an extended
tool (SimulEICon)-based decision-making during the building
design process to support sustainability-based decision-making
on structural solutions, which includes three key indicators –
namely, life cycle cost, carbon footprint, and ecological footprint
measures –to assess the sustainability of buildings (Bueno and
Fabricio 2018).
The construction industry and the project team need to
develop the right and effective strategies for implementing the
principles of sustainability; therefore, BIM enables architects, cost
estimators, engineers, builders, and property owners to entirely
manage a project on the defined schedule and improve the col-
laboration and communication among companies throughout the
construction industry (Olawumi et al. 2018; Zhang et al. 2016).
Planners would benefit greatly from the ability of 4 D BIM simu-
lation to visualize scenarios and consequent multiple metrics in
an integrated manner. They can visualize alternatives and their
Figure 11. The analysis of different LODs and common domains.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT 9
impacts on sustainability which extends the understanding of
complex information of projects. Integrated methods for evaluat-
ing multiple metrics allow stakeholders to grasp the trade-offs
among the multiple metrics for different alternatives and reduce
the search time for appropriate information (Kim, Kim
et al. 2015).
LOD and common domains. In this study, a comprehensive ana-
lysis as depicted in Figure 11 was carried out to find which
classes of LODs are more popular in each domain of integrating
BIM and sustainability. Each LOD class presents specific infor-
mation about the characteristics of models’elements and deter-
mines the content of BIM models in each project. According to
the definition of BIMForum (Alferieff and Bomba 2019), LODs
are categorized in six groups including LOD100, LOD200,
LOD300, LOD350, LOD400, and LOD500. The higher LOD
leads to present more information and details about
BIM models.
The results of the LOD analysis showed that among all papers
reviewed in this study, 40 papers applied case studies based on
different LODs. Figure 12 depicts the distribution of using differ-
ent LODs in the identified common domains. LOD100 applica-
tion is the most popular trend between other LODs. LOD200 is
ranked the second, whereas LOD400 and LOD500 have had the
lowest application.
The identified gaps in common domains. Gap identification is a
foundation of finding future works. Hence, this section intends
to summarize the existing gaps in the literature. According to
the five distinct common domains of BIM and sustainability, the
gaps were identified based on the method developed by
Sandberg and Alvesson (2011), as explained previously. Table 3
demonstrates the existing gaps on the BIM and sustainabil-
ity literature.
According to Table 3, the insufficient data, lack of model val-
idation, developing case studies that cannot be generalized, and
inattention to some effective factors are the most important gaps
discovered in the literature. Future works can be directed to
address these gaps.
Discussion
The findings of this study showed that there is a growing trend
towards addressing construction sustainability issues applying
BIM in the recent years. BIM has a great potential in modeling,
communicating projects with stakeholders, and unifying projects
data. The thematic analysis resulted in five distinct domains that
BIM is able to boost the sustainability and deliver the social, eco-
nomic, and environmental benefits.
Comparing the results of scientometric analysis shows that
the journal of Sustainability has the highest number of published
papers, while in the previous studies of Santos et al. (2019) and
Wang et al. (2019), the journal of “Automation in Construction”
was identified as the most prolific outlet in the topic. Moreover,
Figure 12. The distribution of different LODs.
Table 3. Gaps on the BIM and sustainability literature.
Confusion gaps Neglect gaps Application gaps
BIM, Sustainability and Life
Cycle Assessment
The parameters affecting the life cycle
cost analysis are varied in different
circumstances and the results are
not applicable in all projects
BIM-integrated social sustainability for
the entire building lifecycle is yet
to be examined
BIM-LCA integration results are based
on a specific kind of buildings case
study that cannot be generalized
for different kind of building cases
BIM and Green buildings criteria
and assessment
NA The tools presented in the frameworks
for the rating system of green
buildings require more work to
be verified
Some aspects, such as water
efficiency, are less addressed in
green building rating case studies
BIM, Energy Analysis, Lighting
Analysis and Building
Performance
Factors such as heating and cooling
latent analysis are not considered
in the calculation of annual
operating energy consumption,
which can change the
assessment results
Concerning the data collection in
terms of willingness, as well as the
availability of heritage case studies
where missing data led to different
results in energy modeling
Studies on the BIM-integrated
photovoltaic development to
generate energy disregard the
economic aspects, cost benefit and
payback period analyses
BIM and Environmental
Assessments
Waste management results are
influenced by the type of
prefabricated material that can be
modified if other types of materials
are used
The studies working on frameworks
for BIM and facility management
require more validation and
verification cases
The results of carbon emissions are
based on particular case studies
that cannot be generalized in the
broad context
BIM and Design, Construction and
Project Management
NA The results are based on the low and
unreliable data for BIM capability in
planning for sustainable
construction
The economic aspects of decision
making by BIM for sustainability
need to be considered
10 H. FERDOSI ET AL.
in this research, the co-authorship analysis shows that “Chan
d.w.m”and “Olawumi t.o”have published the most while Santos
et al. (2019)’s findings showed that “zhang”has the most pub-
lished papers in this area. This discrepancy indicates the change
in the results over the past few years. There is no difference
identified between the frequent used keywords discovered by this
paper and other works. Design, energy, and data/information are
the most used keywords in the related works, which affirms the
importance of these areas in this research domain. The advan-
tage of this study is also investigating the active countries in the
field of BIM and sustainability. This information can be used to
obtain the most important articles and leading countries in the
field of BIM and sustainability for future collaborations.
In this review, the thematic analysis method was used for the
qualitative analysis of the literature, while previous researchers such
as Santos et al. (2019) used the content analysis method or Wang
et al. (2019)andSaiegetal.(2018) reviewed and concluded previ-
ous papers for analysis. All of these methods are able to determine
the capabilities of BIM in sustainability, but the advantage of the
thematic analysis is its ability in identifying and discovering the
common domains of the topic without the bias towards setting up
some pre-defined categories. The results of the thematic analysis led
to identifying five primary domains of applying the BIM in the sus-
tainability. The main difference between the results of this paper
and the work of Santos et al. (2019) is the more comprehensive
coverage of the area. This study attempted to discover all the com-
mon areas and the most common LODs applied in each domain
while Santos et al. (2019) classified the literature according to the
definition of sustainability in three parts: economic, environmental,
and social fields. Readers who review the results of this study would
be able to find which type of LOD has more application in each
domain of BIM and sustainability. As a result, future research can
be directed towards applying the higher classes of LODs for differ-
ent themes. Moreover, according to the number of codes assigned
to texts, the field of energy and building performance analysis has
received the largest number of codes, highlighting the significant
role of BIM in facilitating the data transfer between design and
building performance analysis. BIM and design sit in the second
place of the thematic priority which indicates the application of
BIM for sustainability analysis in the design stage.
The gap analysis was further conducted in order to discover the
existing gaps in the topic and identify the future works in a system-
atic approach. This style of the gap analysis has been neglected in
most of the review papers in the field of BIM and sustainability,
while the current study can significantly contribute to the body of
knowledge. According to the developed gap spotting, two categories
of the neglect and applications gaps are the two most important
voids in the five identified domains of BIM and sustainability. As a
result, future studies can be directed to fill these gaps through inte-
grating BIM with social sustainability aspects. In addition, waste
management, carbon emission, and facility management can be
technically investigated via BIM applications to promote the BIM-
based sustainable construction practices.
Conclusion
The current study has examined the capabilities of the BIM pro-
cess in sustainability, utilizing scientometric and thematic ana-
lysis methods. In this regard, instead of focusing on the BIM
application in various project phases, it has been attempted to
understand the evolution of corresponding literature and con-
sider all common domains of the BIM processes in sustainable
construction. Subsequently, after performing a three-step analysis
and review procedure, a total of 188 published papers in journals
with a Q1 index from the first of 2015 to the mid of 2021, inclu-
sive, were selected and considered. The increasing trend of the
studies in BIM and sustainability was confirmed according to the
annual publications number. Ultimately, the scientometric ana-
lysis revealed the following findings:
The most influential journals in the fields of BIM process
and sustainability are the Journal of sustainability
(Switzerland) for its highest number of published papers,
and the Journal of Automation in Construction in light of
its highest number of citations.
The study of Wong and Zhou (2015) has the highest num-
ber of citations among the assessed literature.
Keyword’s analysis of the literature has led to the acquisition
of BIM and sustainability integrated fields, which include
Architectural design, Information theory, Life cycle,
Decision making, Environmental impact, Energy utilization,
Energy efficiency, LCA, Green buildings and Eco design.
Countries that have been active in this research field were
identified as United Kingdom, Hong Kong, China, and
United states.
The thematic analysis results have included 17 themes, div-
ided into 5 categories of Sustainability and LCA, Green buildings
criteria and assessment, Energy Analysis, lighting and building
performance, Environmental Assessments and Design, construc-
tion, and project management. Gap spotting throughout the lit-
erature showed that insufficient data, lack of model validation,
developing case studies that cannot be generalized to the broader
context, and inattention to some effective factors are the most
important gaps. Moreover, the results showed that the frequency
of LOD100 BIM models is higher than the others.
In view of the research method, two limitations must be
acknowledged and considered for further studies. The first limita-
tion of the current research is that the collected articles for sciento-
metric analysis were gathered from the two databases of Scopus
and Web of Science; thus, the publications that were not available
in these two databases were not evaluated in the current study. The
secondoneisregardingthetime-periodofthedatacollection,such
as the number of published papers and citations considering the
studies from the first of 2015 to the mid of 2021. In this aspect,
the future studies can acquire the latest database information to get
the most updated results. According to the identified gaps and limi-
tations in the intersection of BIM process and sustainability, further
studies are recommended in the following fields:
1. Examining the capabilities of BIM in achieving
social stability
2. Combining BIM with facility management and waste man-
agement processes
3. Investigating the potential of BIM in reducing carbon emis-
sions for achieving net zero emission programs.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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