Supply Chain Collaborative BIM System for Minimising Construction Waste in Design

The UK construction industry generates 32% of landfill wastes (WRAP, 2007). Despite existing research that the best form of waste strategy is minimization which can be best achieved during design stage of a building, there is currently no tool that designers and contractors can use to successfully predict and reduce construction waste at design phase. The project aims to develop an intelligent BIM system using early supply chain involvement (ESCI) to tackle the problem at holistic level, by designing at all the 6 waste spectrums. These include (i) prediction of quantities and identifying sources of waste at design stage, (ii) material re-use and recovery, (iii) material optimisation (iv) off-site construction, (v) waste efficient procurement and, (vi) deconstruction and flexibility. The BIM system uses innovative Data Mining and Knowledge discovery techniques with heuristic-based search optimization. It is about collaborative waste minimization in design and not waste management after it had occurred.