Hierarchy based information requirements for sustainable operations of buildings in Qatar

Traditionally, information flow in the built environment concentrates on the needs of the design and construction, rather than on the operation. This leads to inconsistencies and disruption within stages, clearly found at handover of information. It commonly hinders delivery of client’s requirements for the operation of buildings along the project development as well. A structured information delivery enabled by BIM protocols, established at project’s inception, could prevent information loss during the project development. It could as well ensure the coordinated delivery of the clients’ requirements as stated at the pre-design stage, and help anticipating the impact of clients’ decisions at early project stages on operations performance. In this paper, a methodology to obtain, categorize and weigh sustainability and facility management values with the subjective driven priorities from high level management is outlined as part of a decision support system. The latter will assist, in the context of a digital project delivery, in translating these priorities into objective parameters and information categories to include within the bidders’ BIM Execution Plans. Additionally, it will help in checking compliance with both sustainability and client’s goals during the project development and judge them appropriately focusing on the building operation applied to the Qatar context.