  With the growth in automated data collection of construction projects, the
need for semantic navigation of mobile robots is increasing. In this paper, we
propose an infrastructure to leverage building-related information for smarter,
safer and more precise robot navigation during construction phase. Our use of
Building Information Models (BIM) in robot navigation is twofold: (1) the
intuitive semantic information enables non-experts to deploy robots and (2) the
semantic data exposed to the navigation system allows optimal path planning
(not necessarily the shortest one). Our Building Information Robotic System
(BIRS) uses Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) as the interoperable data format
between BIM and the Robotic Operating System (ROS). BIRS generates topological
and metric maps from BIM for ROS usage. An optimal path planer, integrating
critical components for construction assessment is proposed using a cascade
strategy (global versus local). The results are validated through series of
experiments in construction sites.
