A Preliminary Study on Integrating Bim and Taiwan Bridge Management System

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a 3D application technique based on buildings that has been used in the building industry in Taiwan for a number of years. Requirements of using BIM are incorporated into the construction contracts in many public construction projects in Taiwan. Currently, only a few bridge BIM applications found as opposed to that in building projects in Taiwan. Taiwan Bridge Management System (the second edition, TBMS2) is able to generate a schematic 3D model based on basic bridge inventory data. Components in the 3D model can be selected, zoom in or zoom out, or rotated so that type and position of deterioration can be marked on. However, TBMS2 is not able to read bridge BIM models generated by BIM software. I.e., the integration between bridge BIM and TBMS2 is not yet feasible; even though the bridge BIM model has been established, the bridge information still needs to be input into TBMS2 manually. There is a lot room for improvement. This research aims at developing an efficient and feasible means to integrate bridge BIM models and TBMS2. Necessary basic fields for a bridge will be firstly analyzed, then the standard processes to establish a bridge BIM model in the software will be summarized. Thus, after the bridge BIM model is established, a bridge data file can be output as the input into TBMS2 which will save a huge amount of human labor. Result of this research is deemed very helpful in improving efficiency of bridge management using BIM techniques.