Andre Borrmann

Technical University of Munich | TUM · Computational Modeling and Simulation

Digital Twins (DTs) provide a promising solution for bridge operation, thanks to their ability to mirror the physical conditions into a digital representation. At the core of the DTs is a geometric-semantic model. The modeling process for existing bridges, however, requires extensive manual effort. Given the high number of bridges in operation worl...

This paper introduces BIMCaP, a novel method to integrate mobile 3D sparse LiDAR data and camera measurements with pre-existing building information models (BIMs), enhancing fast and accurate indoor mapping with affordable sensors. BIMCaP refines sensor poses by leveraging a 3D BIM and employing a bundle adjustment technique to align real-world mea...

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a disruptive technology with the potential to revolutionize the construction industry by integrating digital design with automated manufacturing. This paper presents and extends Fabrication Information Modeling (FIM), a comprehensive framework tailored for automated manufacturing in construction. FIM facil...

This paper introduces a new approach to extract and analyze vector data from technical drawings in PDF format. Our method involves converting PDF files into SVG format and creating a feature-rich graph representation, which captures the relationships between vector entities using geometrical information. We then apply a graph attention transformer...

Road infrastructure is a complex system of heterogeneous subsystems that influence each other. Due to their different characteristics, the individual subsystems road and bridge are often considered separately during their operation. Thus, effects resulting from the interaction between the subsystems can only be analyzed manually and with a high cur...

In the industrial sector, products evolve significantly over their operational life. A key challenge has been maintaining precise, relevant engineering data. This paper explores the digital twin concept, merging engineering and operational data to enhance product information updates. It examines digital twin applications in construction, material f...

Model-based collaboration is well-established to exchange design information in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector. Even though various tools provide comprehensive means to author such models containing discipline-specific elements and semantic information, there is great potential to improve how multiple discipline models...

This paper presents a pioneering solution to the task of integrating mobile 3D LiDAR and inertial measurement unit (IMU) data with existing building information models or point clouds, which is crucial for achieving precise long-term localization and mapping in indoor, GPS-denied environments. Our proposed framework, SLAM2REF, introduces a novel ap...

While 3D LiDAR sensor technology is becoming more advanced and cheaper every day, the growth of digitalization in the AEC industry contributes to the fact that 3D building information models (BIM models) are now available for a large part of the built environment. These two facts open the question of how 3D models can support 3D LiDAR long-term SLA...

A geometric digital twin can help monitor the progress, control the quality, and simulate the energy of a building during its construction and operation stages. However, current methods cannot match and segment instances with a high-resolution result in real, complex environments regarding mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) objects, since t...

The conventional BIM authoring process typically requires designers to master complex and tedious modeling commands in order to materialize their design intentions within BIM authoring tools. This additional cognitive burden complicates the design process and hinders the adoption of BIM and model-based design in the AEC (Architecture, Engineering,...

Persistent issues of schedule deviations and cost overruns within large construction projects aggravate the construction industry’s global productivity concerns. However, how holistic, data-oriented methods can effectively be leveraged for investigating project performance and identifying potential bottlenecks during the construction phase remains...

In this paper, we present a novel, scalable approach for constructing open set, instance-level 3D scene representations, advancing open world understanding of 3D environments. Existing methods require pre-constructed 3D scenes and face scalability issues due to per-point feature vector learning, limiting their efficacy with complex queries. Our met...

This paper presents a pioneering solution to the task of integrating mobile 3D LiDAR and inertial measurement unit (IMU) data with existing building information models or point clouds, which is crucial for achieving precise long-term localization and mapping in indoor, GPS-denied environments. Our proposed framework, SLAM2REF, introduces a novel ap...

Today, the management of road infrastructure relies mainly on disparate, unconnected systems, making comprehensive data analysis across different systems or subdomains, considering the interactions between them, almost impossible. The paper attempts to address this problem using a graph representation of the infrastructure data. It discusses the sy...

This paper proposes an automated method for creating semantic digital building models using dense point clouds and images. The method employs a hybrid bottom-up, top-down approach, integrating artificial intelligence capabilities in scene understanding with domain engineering knowledge to overcome challenges in indoor 3D reconstruction. The pre-tra...

This research paper addresses the challenges in exchanging project management information within the construction industry, particularly focusing on construction schedules. The current reliance on XML or spreadsheet-based files for schedule exchange leads to information loss and misinterpretation in commonly used project management software. Divers...

The complexity of BIM software presents significant barriers to the widespread adoption of BIM and model-based design within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector. End-users frequently express concerns regarding the additional effort required to create a sufficiently detailed BIM model when compared with conventional 2D draft...

Facing increasingly complex BIM authoring software and the accompanying expensive learning costs, designers often seek to interact with the software in a more intelligent and lightweight manner. They aim to automate modeling workflows, avoiding obstacles and difficulties caused by software usage, thereby focusing on the design process itself. To ad...

The circular economy (CE) aims at a transformation towards a sustainable economic system whose growth is decoupled from the availability of finite resources. Due to the resource intensity of the construction sector, it is one of the main sectors where the CE concept is being applied. Central to the concept of circular buildings (CB) is to close the...

Utilizing robotic systems in the construction industry is gaining popularity due to their build time, precision, and efficiency. In this paper, we introduce a system that allows the coordination of multiple manipulator robots for construction activities. As a case study, we chose robotic brick wall assembly. By utilizing a multi robot system where...

Point clouds, image data, and corresponding processing algorithms are intensively investigated to create and enrich Building Information Models (BIM) with as-is information and maintain their value across the building lifecycle. Point clouds can be captured using LiDAR and enriched with color information from images. Complementary to such dual-sens...

The preparation of laser scanning missions is important for efficiency and data quality. Furthermore, it is a prerequisite for automated data acquisition, which has numerous applications in the built environment, including autonomous inspections and monitoring of construction progress and quality criteria. The scene and potential scanning locations...

Insufficient progress monitoring and quality control measures often lead to cost overruns, reduced productivity, and suboptimal project outcomes. This paper addressed the challenge of high-precision Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) instance segmentation from point clouds by leveraging images and design-intent models in Scan-vs-BIM context...

The AI4TWINNING project aims at the automated generation of a system of inter-related digital twins of the built environment spanning multiple resolution scales providing rich semantics and coherent geometry. To this end, an interdisciplinary group of researchers develops a multi-scale, multi-sensor, multi-method approach combining terrestrial, air...

Digitizing existing structures is essential for applying digital methods in architecture, engineering, and construction. However, the adoption of data‐driven techniques for transforming point cloud data into useful digital models faces challenges, particularly in the industrial domain, where ground truth datasets for training are scarce. This paper...

Modular precast construction is a methodological approach to reduce environmental impacts and increase productivity when building with concrete. Constructions are segmented into similar precast concrete elements, prefabricated with integrated quality control, and assembled just-in-sequence on site. Due to the automatised prefabrication, inaccuracie...

An increasing number of special-use and high-rise buildings have presented challenges for efficient evacuations, particularly in fire emergencies. At the same time, however, the use of autonomous vehicles within indoor environments has received only limited attention for emergency scenarios. To address these issues, we developed a method that class...

The design intent and many meaningful semantics in Building Information Modeling (BIM) models are often implicit}, and some explicit semantics are lost during model exchanges. These missing information can be artificially supplemented through a process called semantic enrichment. However, previous research on semantic enrichment has primarily focus...

Modulare Baukonstruktionen ermöglichen die serielle und automatisierte Herstellung von Fertigteilen, welche kontrolliert in einem Fertigteilwerk produziert und anschließend auf der Baustelle in kurzer Zeit montiert werden können. Hierdurch können Herstellungsprozesse weitreichend optimiert und neue Technologien der automatisierten und robotergestüt...

As part of the digitization of the AEC industry, the Digital Twin concept is becoming increasingly important. Originating in the manufacturing industry, the concept at its core involves a bidirectional coupling of the physical product and its digital counterpart with the aim of keeping the two in sync. Without appropriate capabilities to realize su...

The paper reports on the buildingSMART International project IFC-Tunnel that is developing an extension of the vendor-neutral data exchange standard Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). The paper highlights the importance of a well-defined development process and the involvement of international domain experts. It discusses in detail the requirements...

As-is geometry of existing structures in the built environment can be captured with high accuracy using laser scanning. Frequent measurements and automation of data processing steps allow digital representations of physical assets to be kept up to date at a justifiable cost, even if they are subject to frequent changes. Before operators can execute...

With the increasing adoption of the Digital Twin concept in the construction industry in the operations and maintenance phase, researchers and practitioners are increasingly seeking suitable technological solutions for the design and construction phases. While it is widely accepted that the required platforms hosting the digital twin must be cloud-...

Automated Code Checking (ACC) can be defined as a classification task aiming to classify building objects as compliant or not compliant to a code provision at hand. While Machine Learning (ML) is a useful tool to perform such classification tasks, it presents several drawbacks and limitations. Buildings are complex compositions of instances that ar...

Information-rich BIM models are rarely usable off-the-shelf for operations tasks. Change decisions made on the construction site can lead to significant differences between the as-designed and as-built state of buildings. The responsibility for keeping the digital representation in sync with its physical twin is not defined and will likely only ful...

Site schedules are usually developed by the rule of thumb based on the experience of on-site managers. While this approach can be suitable for smaller job sites, it is challenging to make good decisions for larger projects. Planning errors can result in massive delays and increasing costs. Significant improvements in other industries showed that da...

The design process in construction projects is iterative and multidisciplinary in nature. In today's industry practice, several discipline experts concurrently author multiple versions and design variants of BIM models and share them at frequent intervals. Applying a sound version control methodology can significantly enhance automation, enabling t...

Model-based collaboration has been identified as one of the key concepts in Building Information Modeling (BIM) to enhance productivity in construction projects. To-day's best practice and international standards demand "BIM level 2" which is based on transferring entire (do-main) models through file-based exchanges. However, this coarse granularit...

Modular construction is a method to respond to the high demand on bridge facilities while encountering a pressing need to reduce resource consumption and to respond to shortage of skilled labour. By standardising systems through modular parts and their interfaces, scale effects can be reached and related manufacturing and planning processes can be...

The AEC industry is responsible for 32% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The greatest potential to reduce the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects has been identified to be in the early design stages, where trailblazing decisions of the road corridor and the construction type must be made. We propose a methodology for an au...

Automated progress monitoring builds an important foundation for objective productivity analysis of construction processes. Digital twins of the construction phase rely on fully automated approaches to acquire near real-time progress information. This is essential for identifying bottlenecks during construction and supporting future project plannin...

Conventional pedestrian simulators are inevitable tools in the design process of a building, as they enable project engineers to prevent overcrowding situations and plan escape routes for evacuation. However, simulation runtime and the multiple cumbersome steps in generating simulation results are potential bottlenecks during the building design pr...

Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies have significantly improved building design efficiency. BIM-based Automatic Code Compliance Checking (ACCC) provides a robust way to evaluate whether building designs meet the construction codes and regulations. However, architects and designers usually have to alter the model manually to achieve co...

Conventional pedestrian simulators are inevitable tools in the design process of a building, as they enable project engineers to prevent overcrowding situations and plan escape routes for evacuation. However, simulation runtime and the multiple cumbersome steps in generating simulation results are potential bottlenecks during the building design pr...

The high effort of operating and maintaining existing infrastructure facilities resulted in a large stock of structurally deficient bridges in most industrialized countries. Today, the condition assessment of bridges is conducted mostly manually. To relieve effort and costs, the digitization and automation of conventional manual, labour-intensive m...

To reach the goals of limiting global warming, the embodied greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of new buildings need to be quantified and optimized in the very early design stages, during which design decisions significantly influence the success of projects in achieving their performance goals. Semantically rich building information models (BIM) enabl...

Die Baustellenüberwachung ist heutzutage ein überwiegend manueller Prozess, bei dem die Ereignisse auf der Baustelle von Baustellenpersonal händisch dokumentiert werden. Diese ineffizienten, nicht mehr zeitgemäßen Arbeiten resultieren in einem erheblichen Zeit‐ und Kostenaufwand und einer hohen Fehleranfälligkeit. Demgegenüber bieten die rasanten E...