Exploiting BIM in energy efficient refurbishment: a paradigm of future opportunities

This paper focuses on the potential for adopting Building Information Modelling (BIM) through the refurbishment process, to achieve energy efficient buildings. This paper critically reviews generic building refurbishment challenges in retrofit processes. High energy efficiency in the refurbishment process is confronted by both technical and social challenges. Extant literature highlights the importance of decision making at an early design stage. This paper explores how the potential of BIM may be integrated at an early stage and how this new technology can be brought into the refurbishment process. The possibility of exploiting new concepts (application of generative and parametric design for generation and change management) throughout the early refurbishment process is introduced as an evaluation method within this paper. There is a significant knowledge gap in the literature concerning the veracity of findings to date, which explicitly identify the support mechanisms needed to exploit the opportunities presented with new refurbishment methods.