The planning of building actions that have the goal of rebuilding or deconstruction depends on the documentation of the stock. Only by a precise knowledge of the exact scenario and its boundary conditions the goals and methods can be derived, discussed and determined. The effort for the planning and ultimately the execution depends on the quality of the available building documentation as planning basis.

In this way, a building information model according to the requirements of these scenarios cannot be generated simply and arbitrarily for each existing building, but rather has to arise from the construction of the building with the consistent application of the BIM methodology to the execution planning. This is the only way to create a model with a useful level of detail from LOD 400, categorized by American Institute of Architects. Building planning using Little BIM within closed actor boundaries creates a highly earmarked model without any completeness of the required information. Only a collaborative use of Big BIM beyond all specialist planning disciplines will create a building information model with the data of all specialist disciplines.

An essential question for the later usability of the data is the data format in which the data is stored. On the one hand, it is crucial to be able to edit the model in order to ensure the possibility of later adjustments and updates to a changed structural condition. However, the open format Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) of the buildingSMART organization follows an approach that is designed for the creation planning phase, in which geometry data cannot be changed arbitrarily, but only by the respective author. In general, the necessary imports and exports of data from a native to the open format are associated with potential misrepresentations. However, abandoning the open standard is also a question of the actor constellation and the nature of the client. Only professional and private-sector builders with long-term partners can coordinate the extent of the methods and processes so strongly to their usage scenarios that the coordination does not have to take place via the data format. If there are changing partners or if it is the public tender, this is not the case.

In addition, updating should be feasible in the context of a structural change without overwriting the information on the previous structural condition, as it may be necessary to preserve it as part of fault analyzes or for the assessment of expected contamination during demolition by appropriate uses. However, the change management methods offered so far are currently unable to do so because they are designed as decision aids in planning. Also, the ability to link objects with versions or time data is not yet sufficiently realized. A versioning of model files soon finds its limits in practicability. Mass discovery is emerging as a special form of quantity take-off as a standard method in BIM applications. In a LOD 400 model, very accurate methods can be used.

The flexibility of object properties make the BIM method a powerful and versatile tool. With regard to the professionally qualified addressees of information provision, however, care should be taken to ensure that parts of product data sheets for specialist planners can contain unnecessary information and do not have to be adopted. Therefore, the focus should not only be on the completeness of the data, but also on their utility value and the clarity of the model information. It should also be avoided to integrate future or possibly even predictable structural changes in the building information model and thus to anticipate a later, professional planning. A building information model can only support a technical planning assessment, but in no case replace it.