Integration of LCA and BIM considering early building/construction design stages

Abstract

Construction industry is moving towards sustainability,but it is still inefficient, and therefore,the root problems of inefficiency have to be solved. LCA implementation in the early design phases will contribute to the achievement of a sustainable building, assessing environmental criteria.Nevertheless LCA has some drawbacks that need to be solved such as lack of data, manual data re-entry, or difficulties for non-experts to perform the assessment. The integration between LCA and BIM could solve these drawbacks and boost the implementation of LCA in the design phase.There are some new developrrients seeking integration such as LCADesign and BSLCA, but further improvement is needed in order to achieve an efficient interoperability.