BIM-Based Maintenance Management System for Healthcare Facilities

Abstract

The reliable maintenance management system of medical equipment influences the patients’ treatment and the hospitals’ performance. Although building information modeling (BIM) technology has evolved the construction industry, it does not fully comply with the facility management (FM) industry, particularly with repair and maintenance. BIM-based FM provides a structured platform to effectively capture necessary data during the construction stage for effective facility maintenance management (e.g., prioritizing maintenance work orders). Despite the design improvements and preventive maintenance plans, unplanned failures are inevitable and need quick and appropriate reactions. This paper introduces an integrated BIM-based framework for effective facility maintenance management. This framework consists of an integrated maintenance database for medical equipment, a scheduling engine to prioritize and sequence work orders, and a 4D simulation module to visualize the work-order handling process semiautomatically. Case-based reasoning (CBR) is also employed in the simulation engine to capture expert knowledge and facilitate the sequencing process. The proposed framework’s capabilities are demonstrated by applying and validating in a national healthcare facility in Iran.