Building information modeling services reuse for facility management for semiconductor fabrication plants

As building information modeling (BIM) technology becomes mature, there is an increasing demand for the interaction or interoperability between BIM tools and various facility management (FM) systems, especially in semiconductor fabrication plants (FABs). Customized BIM services, i.e., plugin programs, have been developed for FM systems to reuse BIM data or functionality. However, such development may make an FM system more vulnerable to external changes such as BIM tool upgrades. The quality of BIM models reused may deteriorate sharply even if a slight change occurs in any of the upstream BIM services. Based on the model-driven architecture defined by Object Management Group, this research proposes a semi-automated FM system factory called EncapsulatingBIM4FM to formalize the reuse process of BIM services so that changes on BIM tools will not propagate to an FM system. A pilot system for selected FM tasks for an FAB in Taiwan was crafted using EncapsulatingBIM4FM. The tests demonstrated that BIM and FM systems can achieve software interoperability, and they can evolve independently based on individual requirements. BIM's central role in the management of a facility's lifecycle information could be established if EncapsulatingBIM4FM is utilized to develop associated FM systems for the facility.