Throughout the life of a construction project, many materials from a variety of sources are used. In order to most efficiently exploit resources, it is important to track materials as they are:

• Created (mined, quarried, recycled) 
• Moved through the supply chain
• Installed on sites
• Maintained
• Decommissioned and recycled

Additionally, it is also important to keep records of decisions made in different scenarios. Understanding, interpreting, and analysing this data allows knowledge to be developed, which can easily be passed on to learn lessons for the future.

This is one of the main focus points of the BIMSE group, and is currently being investigated in projects such as BIMchain and MetaBIM, and in future proposals. It is our belief that the collection and analysis of this type of data in this way will lead research into new generations of BIM and Smart Computing.