Finnish demonstrations

The accessibility use case is based on compliance checking of Finnish regulation “241/2017 Government Decree on Accessibility of Building”. The decree sets regulatory requirements for the dimensions of the building and its access routes and sanitary facilities for accessibility, level differences, and specific requirements for assembly and accommodation facilities.

The use case is applicable for BIM-based automated compliance checking as the regulation contains some unambiguous requirements for measures, e.g., for ramps, passageways, or free space in toilets, which can be checked from the geometry of the building. On the other hand, the regulation also contains requirements that currently need the designer’s input as value, like the definition of a “non-slippery” surface for a ramp. Besides these detailed requirements, some clauses need justification or other knowledge for compliance approval, like the requirement of “adequate number of spaces for wheelchair users”. In Finland, some interpretations for such clauses are maintained by major municipalities, but those are not considered in the Finnish demonstration (see Topten ‘common construction practices’; in Finnish).

The compliance check for accessibility requires the identification of the building and space types and component types of the structures and other building parts. Figure 4 shows an example of space and component information needed for accessibility checking. The accessibility of doors, entrance of building, passageways, doorsteps and toilets will be checked in the demonstration.

In the Finnish demonstration, accessibility compliance checks are based on national requirements of IFC data for BIM-based permitting. Those requirements demand correct IFC entities to be used in modelling and more detailed information on components and spaces, like predefined types of IFC entities and IFC properties. There are also national definitions for identifiers of space types and national property sets. These definitions are used in all Finnish demonstrations.

The national BIM requirements have been tested in the Finnish demonstration projects with existing software and methods. The new development in ACCORD is based on enhanced cloud-based permitting and compliance checking services following the ACCORD principles. In the use case of accessibility compliance checking, selected clauses are tested by applying the ACCORD-developed BCRL rule language to present national regulations and utilise those in the compliance checking service. Also, the ACCORD API is tested in communication between the permitting and compliance checking services.

Figure 4. Visualisation of compliance check for required free space of accessible toilet (Courtesy of Solibri Inc).

Following the revision of the Finnish Building Act, the building authorities in Finland will require a Climate Declaration for every new building from 2026. According to the Decree by the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, the Climate Declaration will contain the calculated whole-life carbon footprint of the building and building site and their impact beyond the design life of the building (carbon handprint) in kgCO₂e per square meter of heated area. The limits for the buildings’ carbon footprint will be introduced in the following years. This new requirement may burden the design offices, especially the small ones, without dedicated LCA experts and access to the relevant tools and databases. Therefore, Finland has created a national construction emission database to support this transition and harmonise Finland's LCA reporting.

This use case aims to demonstrate the possibility of a fully automated calculation of the lifecycle impacts needed for the Climate Declaration from the BIM model in IFC format. The new Decree of the Ministry of the Environment provides basic requirements for the information needed in the model and the Climate Declaration. The demonstration covers checking the information content and comparing the whole-life carbon footprint of the building to the limit. It should be noted that at the time of the development of this use case, the new Building Act and limits were not published by the Ministry of the Environment, and therefore, this part of the use case is purely hypothetical.

The use case is mostly processing outputs from the tool AC(CO2)RD developed for the purpose of this demonstration (Hradil, 2023). The tool automatically extracts the information from the IFC model and relevant environmental databases, combines them and generates the report without user interaction (Hradil et al., 2024). The process is designed to overcome barriers caused by insufficient or mismatched data in the model and/or databases by automatically generating conservative assumptions and providing feedback to the designer about the parts of the model that can be improved. Additional barriers may still arise because of the ongoing development of Finnish regulations and IFC requirements.

The Operational safety use case is implementing compliance checking of the Finnish regulation “1007/2017 Decree of the Ministry of the Environment on Safety of Use of Buildings”. In the unofficial translation of this decree, the heading is in the format: “Decree of the Ministry of the Environment on the operational safety of buildings” (1.8.2024).

The safety of use requirements refers to three main risk categories:

• Falling and slipping; collision of a moving user or risk of impact by a moving object;
• Fire, electricity or explosion accidents;
  • Note: provisions of fire safety are laid down in the Decree of the Ministry of the Environment on Fire Safety of Buildings, and provisions on electricity safety are laid down in the Electricity Safety Act
• Accidents in buildings and building sites which are caused by moving vehicles.

This use case is similar to the accessibility use case (FI-2). Both are partially applicable for BIM-based automated compliance checking, as several defined measures can be checked from BIM. Such requirements are, e.g., the width of the passageway or the maximum allowed rise of a step of the staircase, with some options depending on the usage of the staircase. Some geometry-related requirements are more demanding to check, like the evaluation of the possibility of moving a person on a stretcher in the building, including staircases. Some requirements for railings can also be checked, but this may require more detailed modelling of the railing, which is not currently common in the permitting phase. Other examples of safety of use are requirements for the yard and playground areas. Some of those can be automatically checked if these areas are modelled accordingly to the building.

The compliance checking for safety of use, like other compliance checking types, is based on national requirements of IFC data for BIM-based permitting. These requirements are not use case specific but set general requirements for modelling with correct IFC entities and input detailed information of components and spaces, like predefined types of IFC entities and IFC properties. There are also national definitions for identifiers of space types and some national property sets. This kind of information is used to identify correct information in the model to apply the rules for checking software.

The national BIM requirements have been tested in the Finnish demonstration projects using Cloudpermit’s and Solibri’s software and methods. The new development in ACCORD is based on enhanced cloud-based permitting and compliance checking service following the ACCORD principles. In the safety of use compliance checking, selected clauses are tested by applying the usage of ACCORD-developed BCRL rule language to present national regulation and utilisation of those in the compliance checking service. Also, the ACCORD API is tested in communication between the permitting and compliance checking services. Testing of the new ACCORD procedure has concentrated on checking railings, dimensions of passageways and width of access routes in assembly areas like auditorium spaces.