Assessment of the Building Code of Australia to inform the development of BIM-enabled code checking systems

Building projects in Australia are traditionally checked manually against the Building Code of Australia (BCA) - a set of continuously changing and increasingly complex regulations. Manual certification processes are error-prone and time-consuming tasks (J. Jeong & G. Lee 2010; Tan et al. 2010). Technical developments in Building Information Modelling (BIM) provide the potential for a new-generation of software tools to assist the checking of compliance with building codes. These should improve efficiency and accuracy for designers as well as for governing bodies. This paper reviews the requirements of certification processes for commercial buildings with specific emphasis on fire codes. We describe the selection of building class, the assessment of fire rating and the interpretation of fire codes. The characteristics of these requirements are explored, and ways for BIM-enabled checking systems to access these data are identified.