Developed the industry's first design support system "SmoothSEK™" that enables highly accurate ZEB evaluation

Centralized BIM One Model and information required for ZEB certification application

Technologies

Obayashi Corporation, in collaboration with Izumi System Sekkei Inc., has developed SmoothSEK, the industry's first (*1) design support system that automatically extracts energy-saving performance calculation information required for ZEB certification applications from a BIM One Model.

Development Background

The need for ZEB in buildings is increasing, as the revised Building Energy Conservation Law will be enforced in 2025 in Japan with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. It is common to calculate energy efficiency and conservation performance in applications for ZEB certification using the "standard input method" stipulated in the Building Energy Conservation Law. However, there are issues that require a great deal of time and effort, such as manually creating an input sheet to extract information on the building skin performance, floor area of all rooms, and installed M&E facilities from the building design documents and importing it into the calculation program.

Configuration and features of this system

Obayashi is promoting the consistent use of BIM One Model based on its BIM business standard SBS® (*2), and SmoothSEK can be linked with BIM One Model to enable accurate and smooth evaluation of energy conservation performance. Obayashi is already operating SmartHAK® (*3) and SHAREDTIK® (*4), which are interoperable with BIM One Model to extract information necessary for various performance. Development of SmoothSEK will enable more advanced and efficient extraction of information required for the certification review.

Overview chart of data linkage between BIM and various performance evaluations

SmoothSEC special features:

Accurate and smooth evaluation using BIM One Model to obtain ZEB certification

To obtain ZEB certification, a building's energy conservation performance must be evaluated by BELS (*5) certification, and BELS certification is evaluated using BEI values (*6) as indicators. Since this system uses information centralized in the BIM One Model, there are no omissions or discrepancies in the design process, no inconsistencies due to differences in data used for self-verification or external evaluation, and the information necessary to calculate the BEI value can be accurately extracted.

Positioning of SmoothSEK in the consistent use of BIM One Model

Energy saving performance calculation by automatic extraction of BIM data

SmoothSEK extracts the information required for the Standard Input Method from the BIM One Model in which building and M&E facilities information has been input, and stores them in B-LOOP (*7), a cloud service provided by Izumi System Design that is compatible with SBS. Then, by linking the information to A-repo (*8), which performs energy conservation calculations, accurate and smooth calculation of energy conservation performance becomes possible.

Automation reduces the time required to calculate energy conservation performance by approximately 50%, eliminating the need to collate design documents while also saving labor in verification work.

Consistent use of various M&E-facility related calculation programs and energy saving performance calculation methods

Designing M&E facility specifications requires calculations for a wide variety of functions, but this system can automatically reflect the results of each calculation in energy saving calculations through data linkage with various calculation evaluation applications. In the selection of air conditioning specifications that contribute a high percentage to the BEI value, which is a performance standard, we plan to establish linkage between BIM data and NewHASP (*9) compatible air conditioning design applications that perform detailed studies of heat load calculations.

Linkage between SmoothSEK and various applications

Future prospects

Through digitalization, Obayashi aims to standardize the comprehensive use of BIM in energy conservation calculations by extracting building and M&E facility information. In addition, by using SmoothSEK to meet the needs for ZEB, we will contribute to the realization of carbon neutrality.

  • *1 As "automatic linkage of BIM with the 'standard input method' stipulated in the Building Energy Conservation Law." In house research in August 2023.
  • *2 SBS (Smart BIM Standard)
    Obayashi Corporation's BIM business standards. The standard for creating BIM models that can be understood equally by all parties involved in a project, based on the consistent use of BIM. Available to the public on the Smart BIM Standard website.
  • *3 SmartHAK
    A design support system developed by Obayashi Corporation that links and unifies evacuation safety verification and BIM data.
  • *4 SHAREDTIK
    A design support system developed by Obayashi Corporation that integrates fire resistance verification and BIM through data linkage.
  • *5 BELS (Building Energy Saving Performance Labeling System)
    A system for evaluating and indicating the energy efficiency and conservation performance of buildings by a third-party organization based on the "Evaluation Guidelines for Indication of Energy Efficiency and Conservation Performance for Nonresidential Buildings (2013)" established by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of Japan.
  • *6 BEI (Building Energy Index) value
    The ration of primary energy consumption of a designed building compared to a standard building. The lower the number, the better the energy-saving performance.
  • *9 NewHASP (New heating, air-conditioning and sanitary engineering program)
    A highly accurate dynamic heat load calculation program released by the Society of Building Equipment Engineers of Japan in April 2012. Capable of considering room temperature and heat load fluctuations over the past year for each air-conditioning zone, and calculations based on the assumption that five types of summer/winter peak representative days are cyclically repeated.

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