From CEN three new international new standards for BIM (Building Information Modeling)

The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) has adopted three new international standards for BIM. What are they for and what are they about?

New international technical standards have recently been introduced to build a more competitive and sustainable construction sector.

We are talking about the following standards:

ISO 16739:2016 Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) for data sharing in the construction and plant sector (ISO 16739: 2013);
ISO 12006-3:2016 Construction of buildings – Construction of buildings – Organization of information concerning construction work. – Part 3: Object oriented information scheme (ISO 12006-3:2007);
ISO 29481-2:2016 Building information models – Information distribution manual – Part 2: Interaction scheme (ISO 29481-2: 2012).

ISO 16739, ISO 12006 e ISO 29481: what are they about?

These new standards address the processes that lead to structuring a construction project in electronic or digital form, using Building Information Modeling (BIM).

BIM refers to the use of a shared digital representation of objects to facilitate construction and use processes, related to buildings and infrastructures. BIM technology simplifies design, construction, and process management so as to form a more reliable basis for decisions

ISO 16739, ISO 12006 and ISO 29481: what’s significant about them?

Although the use of standards is not mandatory, it is important to note that once CEN adopts a standard at European level, Member States are prevented from developing or maintaining separate national or conflicting national standards.

How do these standards affect building professionals?

These international standards are of a technical nature and are mainly written for software developers in the design, construction, plant and building management sectors. These deal with issues related to preparing data schemes, data dictionaries, and distribution and data sharing methods.

However, even professionals working in these areas who are involved in the production, management, exchange and use of building digital information must be aware of these rules and must also confirm that the used software solutions conform to these standards. This is because the software can import and export data according to these standards.

Standard ISO 16739, ISO 12006 e ISO 29481: what do they regulate?

La ISO 12006-3:2016, for building, defines how the Construction Information is organised.

Part 3 deals with the “Object Oriented Structure”. ISO 16739:2016 Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is mainly for sharing data in the construction industry and facility management.

ISO 12006-3:2016 specifies a language-independent information model that can be used for the development of dictionaries used to store or provide information related to construction works.
It allows classification systems, information models, object models, and processes to be referred to within a common framework.

At the same time, ISO 16739:2013 specifies a conceptual data schema and a file exchange format for a Building Information Model (BIM) data.

The ISO 16739:2013 standard is an international standard that is open to BIM data and exchanged and shared between the software applications of the various participants in a construction project or facility management.

The standard consists of the data scheme, represented as an EXPRESS specification scheme and reference data, represented as properties, quantity and descriptions.

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