An OpenBIM workflow to support collaboration between Acoustic Engineers and Architects

Architects require the insight of acoustic engineers to understand how to improve and/or optimize the acoustic performance of their buildings. Normally this is supported by the architect providing digital models of the design to the acoustic engineer for analysis in the acoustician's disciplinary software, for instance Odeon. This current workflow suffers from the following challenges: (1) architects typically require feedback on architectural disciplinary models that have too much geometric information unnecessarily complicating the acoustic analysis process; (2) the acoustician then has to waste time simplifying that geometry, (3) finally, this extra work wastes money which could otherwise be spent on faster design iterations supported by frequent feedback between architects and acousticians early in the design process. This paper focuses on the architect / acoustician workflow, however similar challenges can be found in other disciplines. OpenBIM workflows provide opportunities to increase the standardization of processes and interfaces between disciplines by reducing the reliance on the proprietary discipline specific file formats and tools. This paper lays the foundation for an OpenBIM workflow to enable the acoustic engineer to provide near real time feedback on the acoustic performance of the architectural design. The proposed workflow investigates the use of the international standard IFC as a design format rather than simply an exchange format. The workflow is presented here with the intention that this will be further explored and developed by other researchers, architects and acousticians.