Supporting building automation systems in BIM/IFC: reviewing the existing information gap Renato Vieira, Paulo Carreira and Pedro Domingues INESC-ID and Instituto Superior T ecnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, Lisboa, Portugal, and Antonio Aguiar Costa CERIS/IST, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal Abstract Purpose – Despite the continuous development of Building Information Modeling (BIM) standards, not all of its dimensions are supported to the same extent. This is the case of Building Automation Systems (BAS) in which the features that are limited mostly to physical setup of devices are supported. These are largely insufficient to support modeling automation scenarios. The purpose of this article is to clarify the gap in the state of the art and define the need for further developments. Design/methodology/approach – This article explores the existing gap in the literature and discusses the hypothesis of extending BIM to a wider support of BA concepts. Based on an assessment of scientific and technical literature, this study elicits the information requirements of BA and performs a gap analysis with current BIM standards, such as Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). Findings – Our findings lead us to conclude that there is a lack of completeness regarding features from BAS automation and management levels. Furthermore, it is shown that IFC is the most adequate data model to cover BAS without losing its purpose, but there is still a considerable work that needs to be addressed in future research. Originality/value – BIM standards such as IFC position themselves as natural candidates for modeling and exchanging information regarding BA. However, the extent to which BIM supports automation features has never been rigorously analyzed. This article explores the existing gap in the literature and discusses the hypothesis of extending BIM to a wider support of BA concepts. Based on an assessment of scientific and technical literature, this study elicits the information requirements of BA and performs a gap analysis with current BIM standards such as IFC. Keywords Building automation, Building information modeling, IFC Paper type General review 1. Introduction Efficient Facilities Management (FM) is becoming increasingly reliant on Information Technology (IT) tools (Lee et al., 2013; Lilis et al., 2017) such as Computer-Aided Facility Management (CAFM) and Computer-Aided Maintenance Management (CAMM), as well as tools for Building Automation Systems (BAS) and Energy Management Systems (EMS) (Minoli et al., 2017). Ideally, the operation of these tools should be supported by a common representation such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) (Curry et al., 2013; Akcamete et al., 2010; Sporr et al., 2019; Cecconi et al., 2019). Although some progress has been made in operating CAFM and CAMM applications with BIM models (Vanlande et al., 2008; Bogen et al., 2011), BAS and EMS still lack in terms of integration with BIM. The focus of this work is on exploring such a connection, analyzing the possibility of utilizing BIM to express BAS features, thus enabling distinct tools to share details regarding the configuration and setup of the automation dimension of a building. A BAS consists of a Building automation systems The work of INESC-ID researchers is supported by Portuguese national funds through Fundaç~ ao para a Ci ^ encia e a Tecnologia, under contract UIDB/50021/2020. The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0969-9988.htm Received 25 July 2018 Revised 6 May 2019 11 September 2019 19 November 2019 Accepted 27 December 2019 Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management © Emerald Publishing Limited 0969-9988 DOI 10.1108/ECAM-07-2018-0294