by Brianna Crandall — January 13, 2016—A joint initiative between the U.K.’s Construction Products Association (CPA), BIM4M2, the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) and NBS has been formed to provide consistent product data parameters and templates to enable manufacturers to prepare their product information in readiness for the U.K. Government’s April 2016 Level 2 building information modeling (BIM) mandate.
With the BIM requirement looming large on the horizon, there is a real and urgent need for accurate, accessible and consistent digital product information, says CIBSE. The manufacturer community needs a single and unified approach to product data, using a common language. Manufacturers already have the required information, but a simple and industry-wide approach to product data parameters and templates has until now been a challenge, adds CIBSE.
Through this initiative, building and infrastructure manufacturers will have free and ready access to product data parameters and templates that are relevant to their products and have been developed through a defined consensus process. The templates will enable manufacturers to supply product information in a form that aligns with the U.K.’s Level 2 BIM requirements. Each template defines the minimum information about a product that is required for U.K. Government BIM projects, says CIBSE.
The benefit of this initiative to the supply chain is significant. The availability of product data in a structured form equips designers with the information they need to create project information models reliably and accurately. It will lead to the provision of higher quality project data that can be checked and validated by clients, designers and contractors. The successful electronic validation of BIM data relies upon this initiative considerably, says CIBSE.
This initiative aligns the years-long development work of BIM4M2, NBS and CIBSE to create a unified basis for product data parameters and templates. The organizations have agreed to align their processes, approach and terminology, which will enable consistent and transparent development of full peer-reviewed product data templates to expand on the breadth already freely available in the NBS BIM Toolkit, which currently stands at over 5,000.
These templates currently identify the minimum product data requirements for Level 2 BIM and will be extended to include the greater depth of all aspects of a product’s lifecycle and operational performance. Extended product data templates already developed by CIBSE may be found on the CIBSE Knowledge Portal. Common product data parameters will also enable easier development of further templates going forward.
Through this joint initiative, all templates will be maintained and developed to support the evolving needs of a digital construction industry and to ensure product parameters align with the requirements of relevant European and international standards as well as mapping to open data exchange standards, such as COBie and IFC, notes CIBSE.
The templates and common product data parameters will be made available on both the CPA and NBS BIM Toolkit Web sites as well as the existing CIBSE Web site. The current product data templates defining the minimum information for Level 2 BIM are available from NBS.
The initiative will engage with other industry groups, including the wider BIM4 Communities and trade associations, to ensure industry product data requirements continue to be supported.
