Automating Construction Processes by Making BIMs Machine-Readable

Process digitalization and automation is an essential strategy in improving construction productivity. A Finnish fast-track standardization project is paving the way to automation by making open building information models (BIMs) machine-readable.

Background

buildingSMART Finland is a collaboration forum that disseminates information on BIMs and helps its members implement BIMs. Standardization is at the core of buildingSMART Finland’s mission. The organization initiated a project in April 2017 to augment the open IFC standard with property sets and attributes that will make design models truly machine-readable.

The Problem with Current IFC Application

IFC is the international standardized format for sharing BIMs between software applications. It’s strong when it comes to transferring geometrical data, and it maintains certain intelligent features of the model’s components. A system reading the IFC file can understand that a component is, for example, a door or a pipe. The problem with today’s application of IFC is that the attributes of the building components are not sufficiently standardized.

The Goal of Standardization Effort

The goal of this standardization effort is a process in which software-independent, automated data exchanges between systems are possible. All the design and calculation software programs can read and write attribute data consistently.

Project Funding and Involvement

The standardization project has received funding from Finland’s governmental KIRA-digi program. The €16M program’s vision is an open, interoperable information management ecosystem for the built environment.

Source: aec-business.com. Read the original story →