A Dynamic Framework for Construction Scheduling based on BIM using IFC Jan Tulke Dipl.-Ing, Project Manager HOCHTIEF AG Essen, Germany jan.tulke@hochtief.de Jan Tulke, received his civil engineering degree from the Technische Universität Berlin in 2002. He is a PhD student at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar Mohamed Nour BA., MSc. Dr.-Ing. Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany. mohamed.nour@daad-alumni.de Mohamed Nour, received his architecture degree from the Univ. of Helwan, Egypt. MSc. project management, Manchester, UK. Dr.-Ing. Bauhaus, Germany. Karl Beucke Professor of Information Technology in Construction Bauhaus-Universität Weimar karl.beucke@bauing.uni-weimar.de Karl Beucke received his civil engineering degree from Ruhr- Universität Bochum,Germany, M.Sc., North Carolina State University in Raleigh, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, USA Summary Construction scheduling is one of the key processes during the development of construction projects. As Building Information Models (BIM) gain more and more in importance for the design process, the scheduling process also has to be integrated into the collaborative model based working environment. For this purpose a Business Process Re-engineering approach (BPR) was applied to identify potential areas of improvement within the current scheduling and 4D simulation practice. This paper highlights the main findings and describes a novel solution approach consisting of a dynamic collaboration framework tailored for construction scheduling. Several tools were implemented to prove the new concept. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are deployed to ensure open communication within the project team. Further research is ongoing within the European R&D project InPro [1]. Keywords: construction scheduling; building information model; IFC; object versioning; object splitting; object linking; 4D simulation; CAD. 1. A Business Process Re-engineering approach Business Process Re-engineering is defined as “… the fundamental rethinking and radical design of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.” [2] The major challenge within BPR is to obliterate non-value adding work rather than just using information technology for automating it [3]. Process modelling is considered to be a key aspect of BPR. It gives guidance for the development of new IT solutions. Within the scope of this research the ‘as is’ scheduling process was modelled based on an in depth analysis within a major European construction company. BPMN (Business Process Modelling Notation [4]) was used as modelling technique. 1.1 The Process Model The process model showed that scheduling runs concurrently with other key processes like architectural design, cost estimating, etc. Each of these key processes within a project is carried out by stakeholders specialised to fulfil their specific role in the design team. Due to the fragmentation of the construction industry these stakeholders normally belong to separate business enterprises with their own work routines and existing software infrastructures. The triggering event for the scheduling process is the first need to have a cost and time estimation for the project. As a response well known general purpose project management software (e.g. MS Project, Primavera P6, Asta Team Plan) is used to create the construction schedule. Today, geometry from 2D drawings, trade specific cost budgets and the description of existing project constraints are taken as input by this process. It was found, that depending on the project development stage and the related level of detail of the available design data, four different methods are used to predict the duration of tasks (Figure 1). If the project information is in a very early stage the time estimate can be done only based on human experience from previous projects (D). This method is also used to predict the duration of activities not directly related to construction work, e.g. design or procurement processes. As soon as the cost budget for the project is broken down into the different