Using BIM for Optimizing the Upgrading Cost to Convert the Traditional Buildings to Sustainable Buildings in Iraq

A high percentage of existing buildings in Iraq are traditional buildings, yet there is approximately no such green building in Baghdad or other governorates. Most of these buildings require urgent upgrading to increase their performance (operationally, economically, and environmentally), also the building owners looking for identifying and implementing many of the green building measures to reduce the operational and maintenance costs of their buildings. The decision-makers need to support the possibility of achieving sustainable measures of existing building rating systems such as LEED or BREEAM, and that would require an optimization model. The goal of this study is to maximize the building’s operational efficiency, health, and comfort of the building to its occupants through minimizing upgrading cost and reducing the environmental impacts of the building. An existing building will be used as a case study to illustrate the optimization process and demonstrate the plans and processes required to achieve the green building measures, the capability of reducing the required upgrade costs. For this type of problem, the building drawings are represented Using Building information modeling (BIM) (Revit program), and the life cycle costing and environmental impact can be found using analytical tools (ONE CLICK LCA STUDENT VERSION online software). The results show that up to (15.4 and 23.2) % reduction in discounted and nominal costs respectively could be achieved, the CO2 emissions also had decreased from 34233 Ton to 19299 Ton.