Sustainability assessment through the coupling between BIM and MIVES methodologies applied in viaduct projects

One of the most important challenges in the architecture, engineering and construction industry is to implement sustainable development. Sustainable development seeks not to compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs. The implementation of sustainable development involves the evaluation of the economic, environmental and social sustainability of a project. There are different methodologies that allow carrying out these evaluations or developing projects in a comprehensive way. Among the tools for the evaluation of sustainability, the “Integrated Value Model for Sustainability Assessment” (MIVES) stands out since it allows the evaluation of projects or parts thereof, considering economic, environmental and social aspects. On the other hand, the Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology allows the joint work of all the stakeholders of a project. The integration of BIM and MIVES for the evaluation of sustainability has not been found in the literature. The objective is to develop a new methodology for evaluating sustainability in viaduct projects through the integration between BIM and MIVES. The proposed methodology is developed for viaducts since they are large-scale engineering works and involve the use of a large amount and diversity of resources. To meet this objective, a two-step methodology is applied. First, the new proposal for the evaluation of sustainability is developed and subsequently validated by means of a case study. The proposed methodology has been proposed around the use and analysis of data that must be correct and complete to have results that reflect the reality of the projects.