Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196

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Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

Automated checking of building component accessibility for maintenance T

a,⁎∗ b c
Abiola A. Akanmu (Ph.D.) , Johnson Olayiwola , Oluwole Alfred Olatunji (Ph.D.)
a
Construction Engineering and Management, Myers Lawson School of Construction, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States
b
Construction Engineering and Management, Myers Lawson School of Construction, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, United States
c
School of Design and the Built Environment, Faculty of Humanities, Curtin University, G. P. O. Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845, Australia

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Maintainability is not traditionally considered in the design of buildings. This is partly because design tools
Accessibility seldom facilitate the involvement of facility managers. They do not have rules for checking maintainability
Maintainability either. Consequently, buildings often have components or systems that are challenging to access for main-
Virtual reality tenance. To access the components, maintenance personnel suffer from falls, bruises, and cuts. This paper
Gaming engine
presents the development of an automated system for capturing the inputs of facility managers regarding the
Building information models
accessibility of building components for maintenance. The system integrates building information models,
Microsoft azure and virtual reality for engaging facility managers in the design phase. The functionality and
usability of the system are presented with an example of lighting and air-conditioning systems. The system
provides a platform for mining and extracting knowledge from feedbacks provided by facility managers, which is
significant for improving building design tools.

1. Introduction
The planning and design phases of a building present excellent
opportunities for stakeholders to address issues that may likely occur
during the lifecycle of buildings. Involving key primary stakeholders
during early project phases is known to result in a reduced lifecycle cost
of buildings. In spite of this benefit, facility managers and their staff
(that is, maintenance personnel) who are responsible for maintaining
the constructed facilities, are often excluded from early planning and
design decisions [1]. This is known to result in facilities that are either
costly to maintain or have components that cannot be accessed for
maintenance. An example of this includes building components that can
only be reached with scaffolding; they become inaccessible when such
scaffoldings cannot be brought into the building. When such unreach-
able components [e.g. critical service fixtures] reach their end of life,
they create unilluminated and unusable spaces that affect the perfor-
mance of the building and the utility of the end-users. Lack of compo-
nent's accessibility imposes serious safety risks on maintenance per-
sonnel who attempt to employ unusual means of reaching the
components. For example, if an air-conditioning unit is installed above
a drop ceiling in a restroom or office area with no room for accessing
the unit, the unit is only accessed if maintenance personnel stand on the
water closet or office partition. This is not a good safety practice. As a
result of these issues, maintenance personnel are constantly at risk of
falls, cuts, bruises and electrical shock. In fact, when compared with
other fields of employment in the United States, maintenance personnel
have a much higher rate of injury and illness than the national average
[2]. Such unreachable and unmaintainable components also lead to
facilities with high initial and operating costs, just as they decrease
building performance and satisfaction amongst building occupants. If
involved in the design process, facility managers can provide valuable
input to building designs, such as the type of components typically
requiring maintenance, maintenance issues associated with the com-
ponents and potential design solutions. Although building information
models (BIM) have been known to facilitate communication and col-
laboration between project stakeholders, it still lacks the information,
and knowledge required to aid the maintenance of facilities [3,4].
Moreover, most facility managers lack the necessary knowledge and
skills to interact with BIM [5,6].
Virtual reality (VR) and game engines are increasingly being per-
ceived as useful platforms for immersing and engaging non-professional
users. Although they have been actively investigated in the archi-
tecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) research, their link to BIM
in the context of enhancing facility management has received limited
attention e.g. the integration of these technologies with BIM so that
facility managers can review building designs and provide feedback on
possible improvements to the building designs. Such feedback can also
be useful for generating maintainability rules, which can be used to

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: abiola@vt.edu (A.A. Akanmu), johnolap@vt.edu (J. Olayiwola), oluwole.olatunji@curtin.edu.au (O.A. Olatunji).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103196
Received 19 December 2018; Received in revised form 13 March 2020; Accepted 21 March 2020
Available online 26 March 2020
0926-5805/ Published by Elsevier B.V.
A.A. Akanmu, et al.
improve design authoring tools. Hence, this study presents a system
that leverages virtual reality, game engines and BIM for checking the
accessibility of building components. The proposed system advocates
the involvement of facility managers in the design phase, to capture
their comments to extract rules for improving future BIM tools for
maintainability. To support commercial and institutional establish-
ments that have in-house maintenance departments, the proposed
system uses data storage and mining services within Microsoft Azure for
processing the feedbacks and comments from facility managers.
This paper is organized as follows. In order to demonstrate the ra-
tionale for this research, Section 2 describes literature pertaining to
BIM-enabled design maintainability checking and potentials of emer-
ging technologies for facilitating the involvement of facility managers
in the design phase. Subsequently, the methodology and procedure for
the development of an automated component accessibility checking is
described in Section 3. A case study presented in Section 4 validates and
verifies the prototype system. Section 5 presents an evaluation of the
performance of the proposed system. The system was tested with
building maintenance workers and facility managers. This paper con-
cludes by highlighting the key contributions of the research.
2. Background
2.1. Efforts towards designing for maintainability
Over the years, researchers have advocated for the design of
maintainable buildings by proposing the inclusion of facility managers
in the design phase [7–9]; and by developing guidelines to aid designers
in incorporating maintainability rules in their designs [10]. In a study
by Arditi and Nawakorawit [11], a group of design firms was surveyed
to capture their perspectives on the need for incorporating maintain-
ability in building designs. They identified that building maintenance
processes would improve if maintainability requirements were con-
sidered in the design phase. Dunston and Williamson [12] proposed the
use of a database model for documenting comments and lessons learned
from interactions of project stakeholders during the construction review
process to improve building maintenance. In spite of the potential of
this database for informing future designs, implementation of the
comments will require manual sorting prior to incorporating them in
building designs. Das and Chew [13] developed a method for grading
and prioritizing defects of building subsystems and systems based on
their impacts. The ranking of the defects was meant to improve future
maintainability decisions.
Owing to the potential of BIM as a design, communication and
collaboration tool, Wang et al. [7] developed a framework that uses
BIM as a platform for documenting maintenance data. Their framework
includes equipment attributes, specifications and maintenance data.
Notwithstanding this effort, there are still questions as to how this
approach can enhance future design tools as the framework does not
capture the knowledge from facility managers. Wetzel and Thabet [9]
also proposed a BIM-based framework to support maintenance and
repair during the facility management phase based on the classification
of safety attributes, data processing, and rule-based decision making. To
understand how buildings deteriorate, Motawa and Almarshad [14]
developed a model for capturing information and knowledge of facility
managers during the operation and maintenance phase. Lee et al. [15]
developed a BIM-based system that captures and integrates building
information from the design and construction phases for use by facility
managers in the operations and maintenance phase. In order to enhance
the accessibility of building components, Liu et al. [16] proposed a tool
based on BIM platform (analogous to a clash detection tool) for
checking and maintaining clearances around building components. This
tool was designed to support designers and does not facilitate inputs
from the facility managers. In spite of these efforts, opportunities exist
for actively engaging the facility managers in the design review while
also capturing their design decisions for enhancing future design tools
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Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196
and platforms.
2.2. Other technology solutions
Besides BIM, other information and communication technologies
such as game engines, virtual reality, and cloud computing platforms
are continually being recognized as tools for innovation in the AEC
industry. Game engines have been deployed in AEC research for en-
gineering education [17], safety management [18,19], design review
[20] and facility management [15,21,22]. Kumar et al. [22] deployed
the Unity3D game engine for scenario-based design reviews of health-
care facilities. Dalton and Parfitt [21] investigated the relationship
between BIM and game engines for the design of effective workflows.
These studies proved that game engines have the potential to immerse
users (especially, inexperienced users) while capturing their actions,
thoughts, and decisions [23,24].
To provide users with a first-person view of gaming models, the use
of VR is proposed. Unlike the desktop view of gaming models, VR
provides users a more immersive feel of the environment. Users can be
submerged, navigate and experience the virtual environment, which is
important for reviewing and providing constructive feedback on po-
tential maintenance issues. VR has been researched for several appli-
cations, including for design review [25], workforce training, inspec-
tion [26] and education [27]. VR has also been used in the operations
and maintenance phase of buildings.
Cloud computing platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web
Services and Google Cloud Platform, are third party internet paradigms
that provide access to shared pools of configurable resources [28,29].
These computing platforms provide opportunities for capturing and
storing data from multiple users, while also rendering other services
such as data analytics and integration. Many sections of the industry
outsource their data storage and computation to these platforms. Cloud
computing has been widely proposed and explored in the AEC research
for real-time collaboration of project teams from design to construction
phase [30], the capturing and storing sensor data [31,32], integrating
project management data with building models [33], design and
structural analysis applications [34], and for advancing e-procurement
in the construction industry [35]. This research employs Microsoft
Azure because of its inherent capabilities for building, deploying and
managing different applications, and services such as data storage,
analytics, and cognitive services. For data storage, azure provides dif-
ferent databases such as Redis Cache, Maria DB Server, Oracle, MySQL,
SQL, and PostgreSQL. These relational databases can be used to store
comments, feedback, and information from facility managers and de-
signers. Azure also has the capabilities for text mining, which is bene-
ficial for extracting knowledge from feedbacks provided by the facility
managers. In addition, Azure supports applications built with the .NET
Framework such as C#, thus enabling easy integration with Unity3D
and BIM tools such as Autodesk Revit.
2.3. Need for automated component accessibility checking system
The planning and design phases present excellent opportunities for
the project team to address issues relating to building maintenance.
Existing planning approaches involve verbal inputs from facility man-
agers, if at all. This often results in buildings with components that are
unreachable or unmaintainable. Furthermore, extant literature in-
dicates that there are limited tools to facilitate the involvement of fa-
cility managers in the development of maintainable buildings.
Emerging technologies, if properly leveraged, can play key roles in
seamlessly engaging facility managers in providing feedback to
building designs. Other benefits of an automated component accessi-
bility checking system are: (1) the ability to extract rules from the
feedback to improve future BIM tools; (2) a strategy that facilitates
communication and collaboration between designers and facility
managers; (3) reduction in wastes resulting from unusable spaces; and
A.A. Akanmu, et al.
(a) Single Facility
Fig. 1. Automated component accessibility checking system.
(4) the opportunities for training new hires in facility management
departments.
3. Methodology and system
3.1. Overview
The proposed automated component accessibility checking system
is illustrated in Fig. 1. The system comprises of two segments: single
facility and multi-facility segments. The single facility segment is aimed
at supporting owners of one or more facilities with no in-house facility
manager. The multi-facility segment will better serve owners of mul-
tiple facilities such as institutional, commercial and extensive re-
sidential facilities. Owners in the multi-facility segment are constantly
developing facilities and do have their in-house facility managers.
3.2. Proposed system
The proposed system consists of the following modules, namely:
BIM, virtual reality, game, storage, rule and message modules in-
tegrated using a plugin developed using Visual Studio.Net. The inter-
action of these modules is shown in Fig. 2, and described below:
3.2.1. Step 1 – BIM module: developing models of facilities
The BIM module provides both geometric and non-geometric in-
formation for the gaming module. Required information includes the
size, type, and location of building components such as light fixtures,
floors, and staircases. The proposed system uses Autodesk Revit
Architecture as the design authoring tool for constructing the BIM
model. Other similar software packages could also be used. For the
facility manager to be able to review the BIM model, there needs to be a
significant level of detail (LOD), such as the size, shape, area and spatial
distribution of the model elements. LOD 400 is recommended.
3.2.2. Step 2 – BIM module: importing model into Unity3D
Unity3D, developed by Unity Technologies, was employed as the
gaming platform. To import the model from the BIM module into
Unity3D, the model was first imported into Autodesk 3ds Max as a .fbx
file. Autodesk 3ds Max uses its FBX converter to implement the material
and light converters to convert the material, texture and lighting fea-
tures of the BIM model into a Unity3D FBX file. This file was copied and
pasted into Unity3D “Assets” folder. Unity3D automatically converts
the model into a prefab, which is an asset that stores collections of
components of the model.
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Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196
(b) Multi-Facility
3.2.3. Step 3 – Game module: navigating and examining the model
The game module consists of a hardware and software side, both of
which utilize Unity3D, and VR. The game module provides a platform
for facility managers to visualize and navigate the model using a VR
device. This research employs the HTC Vive [36], which provides visual
reliability and input solutions for our proposed tool. The Vive includes a
headset, two hand controllers and two base stations. Unity3D consists
of game objects and services.
3.2.3.1. Game objects. The game objects include the avatar, canvas,
converted Revit model (also called prefab), and button. The roles of
each of these objects are described as follows:
• Avatar: The avatar object includes the animator, rigid body and
collider components. The avatar object represents the facility man-
ager, who uses the animator component to perform actions such as
walking, running, and jumping. The rigid body component adds
mass to the avatar when moving so that the avatar can respond to
gravity, rather than floating. The script component allows the user
to manipulate the speed of the avatar and the effect of gravity on the
avatar. The collider component adds more reality to the game by
preventing the avatar from walking through walls and doors.
• Canvas: The canvas game object includes the canvas, virtual reality
toolkit (VRTK) canvas user interface (UI) and raycaster components.
The canvas component allows the addition of UI objects such as
buttons, text, panels, sliders, and toggles, on the game interface. The
rendering mode in the canvas component was set to world space,
which allows the canvas to be seen on the VR screen. Raycaster
components enable the interaction of controllers, such as the mouse,
with UI objects. Since the VR headset has controllers for interacting
with game objects, the VRTK canvas UI modifies the raycaster
component to support the use of the VR controller with the canvas
objects. Furthermore, the VRTK canvas UI defines the axis of the VR
controller input module used in the game. For example, the VRTK
calls the trackpadPress() function when either the left or right-hand
controller trackpad is pressed.
• Prefab: Prefab game object was added to the active scene in the
Unity3D game. In order to enable interaction between the prefab
and avatar, mesh collider component was added to the prefab.
• Button: The button game objects allow the user to perform actions.
The game can be accessed and navigated using four main buttons:
building systems, components, equipment criteria, and equipment
accessibility. The building systems button provides the facility
manager with the list of systems, such as mechanical, electrical and
lighting, in the model. If any of these systems is selected, the
A.A. Akanmu, et al. Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196

Fig. 2. System architecture.

corresponding components in the model are populated for selection

from the component button, which provides access to the selected
component. On selecting any of the components, the facility man-
ager is placed beside the component

The proposed system currently has two criteria for checking com-
ponent accessibility: reach and platform. These criteria were identified
from normative literature, as some of the factors influencing the ac-
cessibility of building components [7,37–39]. Both criteria can be ac-
cessed via the equipment criteria button. Reach criteria examine whe-
ther the component can be reached via specific access equipment,
whilst the platform criteria determine whether there is a platform (e.g.
a slab) on which any of the access equipment can be placed.
To check if the component is accessible, the game module contains a
gallery of access equipment (such as ladders and scissor lifts), which
can be accessed from the equipment accessibility button. Each of the
equipment has a maximum reach height and guidelines for use. For
example, in the case of a ladder, Administration [40] recommends that
an average height maintenance personnel should stand at least 2 ft Fig. 3. Position of maintenance worker on a ladder in relation to building
down from the top of a ladder and the maximum working height should component.
be about 3 ft above the top of the ladder (Fig. 3). On selecting any
access equipment, the plug-in determines the maximum working height form a closure surrounding every floor component in Revit; as such,
by deducting the height of the ladder from the height of the component they can be analyzed as convex polygons. Using the Point-in-polygon
from the floor (Eq. (1)). algorithm [41], any geometrical data such as BIM can be examined to
determine if a given point in a plane lies inside, outside, or on the
Maximum working height = Heightcomponent − Heightladder (1) boundary of a polygon. For example, in the case of a light fixture, if the
coordinate of the fixture lies within the bounding box, there is a need to
If there is another platform other than a floor (e.g. stairs) below the
check if there is a hole within the bounding box. This study assumed an
component, the plug-in will check and indicate that there is no plat-
imaginary straight parallel line from the location of the fixture to the
form. In Autodesk Revit, the floors can be characterized using bounding
edge of each side of the floor. If there is a hole in the path of the point,
boxes while light fixtures use point coordinates. Bounding boxes must

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A.A. Akanmu, et al.
Fig. 4. Pseudocode of Point-in-polygon algorithm.
Fig. 5. Inaccessible light fixture above stairs.
the line will touch the hole. If the total count of edges touched by the
line is odd, then the light fixture is within a hole in the floor bounding
box, else the light fixture is not within a hole. The pseudocode of the
Point-in-polygon algorithm is shown in Fig. 4.
In situations where larger scale ladders such as scissor lifts are
needed, the plug-in compares the block volume of the ladder with the
area of the door openings that leads to the location of the component.
On completing the design review, the facility manager has the option of
notifying the designer via the ‘Send form and exit’ menu.
3.2.3.2. Services. Services improve user experience by initiating game
state, data, email and graphics device services. When transitioning
between components in the game, the game device service ensures data
quality by preventing data loss. The game uses the data and email
services for collating and sending the facility manager's feedback to the
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Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196
Fig. 6. Inaccessible airconditioning system.
storage and message modules, respectively. Furthermore, the game
module uses the graphics device service to determine the appropriate
graphics application programming interface (API), then reduce and
balance the load on the computer's Central Processing Unit when
playing the game.
VR aspect of the game module implements the VRTK and SteamVR
Camera. Similar to the Unity3D event system, the SteamVR controller is
used to interact with the game objects. VRTK input receives commands
from the SteamVR controller, processes the commands and sends the
actions to the game objects. Also, VRTK input enables the use of a
virtual keyboard in the VR environment to capture the facility manager
review. VRTK input and SteamVR controller removes the need for
mouse and keyboard during gameplay. VR uses the SteamVR Camera to
control what the facility manager sees while playing the game. The
facility manager's head movement is tracked by leveraging the em-
bedded inertial measurement unit in the headset. SteamVR camera also
A.A. Akanmu, et al. Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196

Fig. 7. The interface of the gaming environment.

Fig. 8. Measurement of fixture height with a virtual laser.

Fig. 9. Bounding box around stairs.

contains a camera rig prefab, which houses the audio, script and the
camera component. The camera rig prefab uses the audio component to
play any attached audio through the speaker of the computer. Camera
Follow script component allows the camera rig prefab to follow the
avatar representing the facility manager. The use of VR removes the
need for the traditional flat screen as the subject will have a 3D ex-
perience while playing the game. Furthermore, this gives the facility
manager an immersive experience as they can examine building com-
ponents while playing the game.

3.2.4. Step 4 – storage module: storing the facility manager's comments/

feedback
There is a need to store the feedbacks and comments submitted by
the facility managers. Any relational database, such as Access and
MySQL, can be used for this purpose. Microsoft Azure SQL Database
was selected due to its scalability, reliability, and support for C#.
Microsoft Azure SQL database ensures a central location to store the Fig. 10. Bounding box around the partition wall.
feedbacks obtained from the game module for further analysis. The
database has a table that contains fields for storing the following: ca-
module uses a connection string (provided by Microsoft Azure) to se-
tegory, type and identity number (ID) of components, and comments
curely connect to the Azure SQL database. Using the proper SQL
associated with each component. To extract the comments, the gaming

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A.A. Akanmu, et al. Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196

completion of the review of the model. In addition to the notification,

the email also contains all the comments and associated components.
The comments are collected from the game module and stored as a list
of strings using C#. These strings are then organized in standard HTML
formats so that they can be readable by the designer. Unity3D has in-
built email composition and sending assets that support much modern
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) servers such as Google. Google
SMTP server was deployed because of its availability and reliability.
Unity3D transmits the comments from the game module to Google
SMTP server over a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) – SSL secures and en-
codes the connection between Unity3D and the Google SMTP server,
ensuring that the comments are consistent and accurate. The para-
meters of the Google SMTP server were set up as follows: Body: FM's
comments; To: designer's email address; From: the FM's email address
and Subject: the name of the model.

3.2.7. Step 7 – BIM module: visualizing and implementing comments

Fig. 11. Feedback and review.
command, the required database schema, and the table was selected
from the cloud database and the feedback was stored into the database.
3.2.5. Step 5 – rule module
The objective of this module is to generate rules from the comments
stored in the storage module, which can guide the decisions of designers
regarding building maintainability. This module is only applicable to
the multi-facility segment of the system. The rule module generates
rules from the comments stored in the storage module, which can guide
the decisions of designers regarding building maintainability. The
stored comments can be classified as unstructured data because the
facility managers can provide these as phrases and clauses. One of
Microsoft Azure's cognitive services is Text analytics. This is capable of
extracting useful keywords or phrases which can be used for generating
maintainability rules. These rules are critical for improving the func-
tionality of future BIM tools.
3.2.6. Step 6 – message module: notification of comments
The objective of this module is to inform the designer of the
Within the BIM module, designers can view all facility manager's
comments and associated components and modify the model accord-
ingly. Autodesk Revit Architecture has an API that can be used for
enhancing Revit's functionalities. Revit's functionalities can be extended
in two ways. One way involves using a model viewer that is on Industry
Foundation Class (IFC). IFC is an internationally recognized industry
standard for data exchange and integration within building construc-
tion industries. The other way is through a software application plug-in
that allows designers to access and use the comments for checking a
building model during the design process. An application can be de-
veloped on the BIM platform, providing ease for a designer to validate
their model according to target rules without the need to change the
design later. The BIM module contains a plug-in, which enables the
extraction of all the comments and rules from the storage module. The
plug-in also embeds the comments in the properties of each component
and on the model's graphical user interface (GUI). The plug-in connects
to Azure's SQL Server database and extracts the comments and asso-
ciated components. These are displayed in a DataGrid on Revit's GUI.
To action the comments or changes suggested by the facility manager,
the designer selects any of the components and the GUI displays the
component.

Plugin
Air conditioning Light Fixture
unit

2 366343 Lighting Ceiling lights Test 2 No platform to access the fixture

Fixtures
3 385631 Mechanical Air Conditioner No place to position the equipment in order
Equipment to reach the fixture
Fig. 12. BIM interface with comments (Air-Conditioning unit (left) and Light Fixture (right)).

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A.A. Akanmu, et al. Automation in Construction 114 (2020) 103196

Table 1
Improvements to prototype.
User-Interface Applications

Measurement tools ‘…include more measurement tools. At least the type of measurements we take when maintaining building equipment’.
Avatar – Equipment Interaction ‘Include how the body structure can physically go into the system and observe what is there… Because of bruises that we sustain’.
Feedback ‘Typing with the tool is inconveniencing…can we use voice or use our hands instead of the controller? Maybe that might reduce the amount of
training’.
Name of Components ‘Use names of equipment that we're familiar with or at least what we have in the work orders’

Table 2
Barriers to prototype implementation.
Barriers Feedback

Incentives to use system ‘What will we benefit from assisting with the design…. i.e. payment’.
Lack of knowledge of supporting technologies ‘Workers will need additional training’; ‘Unless there is an incentive, it will be difficult to convince workers to use this’.
Limited applications and systems ‘The system will need more applications… and more systems. For example, the air-conditioning system above the ceiling and we
have to penetrate for access….’.

4. Case-study: implementation 5. Evaluation

A model of an existing educational facility was used to implement
the single-facility segment of the proposed system. The model has two
stories and houses a variety of space use, including an auditorium,
classrooms, laboratories, and administrative offices. The model includes
different mechanical, electrical and plumbing components, some of
which cannot be accessed for maintenance e.g. light fixtures and air-
conditioning systems. One of the fixtures is located on the ceiling of the
second floor and directly above a staircase (Fig. 5). Another fixture is
located directly above the ground floor level of the two-story building.
One of the air-conditioning units is located in the restroom as shown in
Fig. 6, directly above the partition wall; thus, preventing access to the
system.
The model was imported into the game engine and was launched in
the VR environment. Fig. 7 shows the interface that was initiated in the
gaming environment.
From the interface, the following menus and options were selected:
building system – electrical, component – light fixture 1 and equipment
criteria – reach. The reach menu shows several options for accessing the
light fixtures. The facility manager or maintenance personnel is then
virtually placed directly below the selected light fixture. After selecting
a ladder from the equipment accessibility options, a ladder is projected
into the space and the maintenance personnel measures the height of
the ladder in relation to the position of the fixture using a virtual laser
shown in Fig. 8. On selecting the second fixture and the platform cri-
teria, the maintenance personnel can see a pink bounding box around
the staircase indicating that there is no platform on which to place the
ladder (Fig. 9).
Lastly, using the same selection procedure for the air-conditioning
systems, the maintenance personnel selects the platform criteria and a
pink bounding box is also shown around the partition. This also in-
dicates that there is no platform on which to access the air-conditioning
system (Fig. 10).
After each review, the maintenance personnel leaves a comment on
the ‘Feedback Form’ by clicking on the ‘Review’ button (Fig. 11). At the
end of the review, the designer receives an email containing the
maintenance personnel's feedback and associated components. In ad-
dition to the notification via email, a list of all the comments and names
of associated components appear on the BIM interface. The comments
also appear in the property of each component and each of the com-
ponents is highlighted in the model. The interface (Fig. 12) is shown
when the first comment is selected.
An initial user study was conducted to verify that the developed
prototype meets its intended goal of enhancing accessibility checking
and to obtain feedback for further improvements to the system. For this
study, the focus was on understanding the opinions and perceptions of
the potential users of the prototype. As a result, a subjective approach
was employed for evaluating the prototype – this approach is based on
interpretivist philosophy which encourages the use of qualitative data
for evaluations [42–44].
The prototype was evaluated by three facility managers and two
maintenance workers, who would be the potential end-users and ben-
eficiaries of the prototype. The following process was employed for the
evaluation: To establish context for the work, a presentation of the
research background was given to participants. During the presenta-
tion, participants were introduced to the enabling technologies [that is,
VR technology, Unity3D, and BIM platform]. Applications of the pro-
totype were demonstrated to the evaluators using one of the case stu-
dies in Section 4. Participants implemented the prototype and their
feedbacks was obtained using a focus group. To ensure that evaluators
attended to the key steps and icons required for implementing the
prototype, a pair of Pupil Labs eye-trackers that were embedded in the
head-mounted display of the HTC Vive was used to track the gaze of the
evaluators. The eye tracker was connected to the computer running the
developed prototype and a Pupil eye-tracking software provided by
Pupil Labs [45]. After implementing the case-studies, evaluators were
interviewed during a focus group. The subjects of the focus group dis-
cussion were usability, system improvements, and barriers. The opi-
nions of the evaluators were captured and represented in Tables 1 and
2.
6. Conclusions and future work
This study presents findings on the development of a system that
can enhance facility manager and maintenance personnel's ability to
evaluate building designs for accessibility of building components for
maintenance. The proposed system integrates VR, BIM and Microsoft
Azure. Facility managers were able to interact with BIM designs via VR.
Their opinions and suggestions are captured and stored in Microsoft
Azure. Accessibility of the building components is measured via the
ability of the maintenance personnel to reach the component for
maintenance and the existence of a platform for accessing the equip-
ment. Preliminary results demonstrated the capabilities of the devel-
oped component accessibility checking tool. The automated component
accessibility system showed a very good capability for design review
and collaboration between project stakeholders in the design phase.

8
A.A. Akanmu, et al.
Project cost and building energy usage can be saved and the health and
safety of maintenance personnel can be improved through the auto-
mated component accessibility checking tool. For example, inaccessible
components can be identified and the potential increase in lifecycle cost
and risk of falls, bruises, and cuts to maintenance personnel can be
prevented at the design stage before the building is constructed.
The developed proof of concept lays the foundation for further
studies on how facility managers and maintenance personnel can in-
teract with the developed tool to evaluate the accessibility of building
components for maintenance. Future work will need to focus on the
following: (1) Investigating and evaluating affordances of the VR en-
vironment that will support reviewing designs for maintainability; (2)
Facility managers are increasingly turning to social media as a platform
for communication. Facility managers tweet about facility updates or
even create Facebook pages to keep building occupants updated. Data
mining platforms like the Text analytics service in Microsoft Azure and
free tools like Tweetdeck [46,47] or Hootsuite [48] enable keywords,
geo-location tags, and specific users to be digitally observed or fol-
lowed. By observing social media systems, facility managers can cap-
ture trends about maintenance issues relating to different building
components that may need to be considered in future designs; (3)
Conducting a more rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of the
system with a larger sample population and using eye trackers [this
work is currently ongoing]; and (4) convincing practitioners of its
usefulness and benefits in building maintenance.
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