Employing Bim for the Optimization of Energy Efficiency in Renovation Projects: Eitre Case Study

Incorporating energy efficiency is nowadays the top priority of building renovation projects. The renovation solutions are normally the result of many combined solutions concerning all components of the building (walls, roofs, windows, doors, HVAC, occupation...) and the final outcome is the sum of these micro solutions. The modeling and simulation of the building thermal behavior can quickly become a very complicated and time consuming task with so many variables and factors to be considered. Moreover, the lack of data and ‘up to date’ plans of old buildings can complicate the mission and retard the conception phase. Thus, a high need of easy modeling and simulation tools and procedures is an essential success element for this kind of projects. This obviously is not provided by the traditional modeling and simulation tools. Here appears the high potential of the Building Information Modeling concept which allows project teams to easily bring together data to build the base model and then test different patterns of solutions within very reasonable delays. This paper uses the BIM concept and many of its tools in order to compare different renovation scenarios and check their outcome effect on the building energy efficiency represented by the building energy consumption and users’thermal comfort. The aim is to employ BIM to integrate the energy efficiency needs early in the conception phase of any