LOD standardization for construction site elements

In the last years an increasing attention to the information management in construction is visible. The advent and the continuous development of BIM applications permitted to focus more on this issue and to transform the way of design and manage construction. As known the management of a project is divided in different phases from the early draft to the management of the maintenance. Each of this phase need a different level of information development and also a different graphic detail according to the need of each project. International standards developed different scales for these two issues such as the LOD scale of the American Institute of Architects, taken as guideline in different standards. Since the need of developing a proper construction site plan during each phase of the design process, the level of development of construction elements need to be standardized as well. The paper presents then the development of a LOD scale for construction site elements such as equipment, temporary structures, etc. In particular it considers the phases between the draft design and the detailed design, developed by a client designer. In addition to this it considers the construction phase developed by contractors for the installation design. This according to the systematic approach proposed in an earlier report of research. In fact the research consisted in the analysis of each design phase in order to evaluate the exigencies in terms of information and graphic detail. The postulated LOD scale has been then developed also modelling a reasonable number of elements and tested in the design of real case studies. As a result the findings of this research are inserted in the Italian Standard UNI 11337-4 about the digital management of construction processes and the information development of models, deliverables and objects (c) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.