Impact of sustainability on integration and interoperability between BIM and ERP - A governance framework

The majority of construction organizations that have either failed in their efforts to adopt enterprise wide applications and related technology, or are simply not familiar with it, are the Small to Medium Size Construction Organizations (SMSCO). Their failure or refusal to adopt complex IT systems impacts their ability to integrate in the construction lifecycle as well ability to integrate newer technologies e.g. building information modeling (BIM) systems. As more and more organizations attempt to integrate BIM models that have sustainable design issues imbedded with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, they will discover that whole new set of integration issues will need to be addressed. The intent of this research would be to identify and address these issues. BIM represents the building as an integrated database of coordinated information. Therefore one of the main areas of the interested in sphere of interoperability between sustainable BIM and ERP when it comes to integration has to be data exchange platforms. Other areas that will need to be reviewed and studied are; impact of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) required documentation, Sustainable design guidelines, Building Systems, Environmental Realities, and cost. The ability to govern and integrate with construction lifecycle is key to sustainability, despite all its potential benefits, is the problem that is addressed in this research. In this research, we propose that project governance practices and the organizational capacity to manage the multi-party associations in complex projects can be integrated through a sustainable governance process.