Modeling for building energy performance improvement in accordance with the local climatic settings: a case of a generalizable building design of intermediate health care facilities in Thailand

This study aims to conduct an Integrated Building Design process (IBD), collaborating a Building Information Modeling (BIM) application with a Building Energy Simulation tool (BES) to perform energy analysis, and improving the building energy performance of a Generalizable Building Design (GBD), an universal application on health care facilities design in Thailand, to state recommendations and guidelines of the BIM-BES integration for architects. A baseline model is created using a BIM system, exported by means of gbXML into a BES tool. An additional two types of modifications are performed to test the improvement of energy performance. The simulation results show that a slight variation of building orientations could alter the extent of energy consumption. Building materials constituting the envelope show their significant role on performance improvement (6.39 – 6.55 %).  An integration of high performance measures could minimize energy consumption as much as 12.62 – 12.84%. Finally, the research addresses some limitations of the BIM-BES integration workflow.