ISO 19650, TR CEN standards and the EU TASK Group: the evolution of BIM

The evolution of BIM: from ISO 19650 to TR CEN following through to the EU TASK Group Manual. Here are all the updates and regulatory developments involved

Given the continous evolution of BIM and the consequent regulatory updates, let’s take a look at what is happening to support an increasingly conscious adoption of the BIM methodology in the construction sector.

There are numerous innovations, completed or in progress, which we consider useful to bring to everyone’s attention.

Conclusion of the work of ISO 19650

The troubled process of the drafting of ISO 19650, part I and II, seems to have come to an end.

The norm is an important supranational reference, being able to constitute (a fundamental) contractual annex in international tenders.

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About a year ago, its emanation seemed imminent, then postponed due to differences in opinions among the countries involved in the drafting.

This led to a new opening of the works up to the current approval of the current text: according to the regulation, at the end of the procedure and the consequent diffusion of the law, only the “formal vote” would be missing, i.e. the final approval vote which should not, however, bring surprises or delays.

Furthermore, given the importance of the standard, a request has been made to change the usual procedure, with the elimination of the aforementioned “formal vote” in light of the long period of discussion during the development of the standard, in order to accelerate its diffusion.

Its writing, as mentioned, required numerous efforts and compromises.

One of the most important aspects was, for example, the containment (elimination) of the terminology and references to contractual aspects.

In fact, for countries with a precisely organized state and legislative structure, the presence of a technical reference standard with well-defined references could have introduced an element of conflict and/or a constraint to future specific national legislative developments.

For this reason, expressions such as “appointed party” or “appointing party” ( “designated party” and “designating party”) have been introduced to indicate, in a generic way, those figures that in a contract are defined, for example, as Foster and Customer.

For the same reason, for example, the famous acronym EIR (Employer Information Requirements, according to the original Anglo-Saxon definition) assumed, instead, the new definition of Exchange.

Hierarchy of information requirements

Information Requirements, i.e. “information requirements relating to an assignment”, thus focusing the meaning on the activity rather than on the person requesting the information requirements.

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Adoption of the 19650 by the CEN

Although in the ISO area the protagonists of the drafting of ISO 19650 are roughly the same delegations present in the CEN (with the only exceptions of the Japanese and, sometimes, US and Australian members). The latter have felt the need again to intervene on the standard’s text.

And this, probably, because in the ISO area the wording of the text was mainly British-led while in the continental area (CEN), especially the French and German (and not only) want to make the weight of their peculiarities felt in the organization of the text.

However, since ISO 19650 falls under the “Vienna Agreement”, the CEN working group dealing with its adoption in the continental sphere (TC 442/WG3), will not be able to intervene in any way directly on the text.

It should be remembered that the “Vienna Agreement” is an international agreement according to which the ISO standards that fall within it automatically become European standards – CEN – without the possibility of making further changes; Only national annexes can be added whose value is, of course, limited to specific geographical areas.

Therefore, the path that the CEN working group decided to follow is the drafting of an explanatory document, a Technical Report (TR), whose work began at the recent meeting in Avignon.

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EUBIM Task Group: towards the end of the first cycle.

The work of the EU BIM Task Group is coming to an end and it will complete its activity in December 2018.

By the 6th December in Brussels, in fact, the conference is scheduled and a document to relaunch the activity for the next three years will be presented, with the indication of a sort of road map.

After the publication of the document “Manual for the introduction of BIM by public demand in Europe”, available in all the European Community languages, and freely downloadable from the EU BIM Task Group website, now the next objective should be to make available indications more operational for the European public commission.

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