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(Source enr.com - Date 3/23/03)

By Harry Goldstein

Chairman of the IAI Board of Directors Norbert Young (also president of McGraw-Hill's Construction Information Group) opens the Industry Day conference.

How will software that incorporates Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and exploits XML change the way you do business? Yesterday, in a day-long demonstration at the International Alliance for Interoperability's (IAI) Industry Day conference, presenters proved that competitors can collaborate to create the kind of interoperability that will change the way the AEC industry does business.

IFCs are specifications that define building elements such as walls, doors, windows, beams, slabs, and furniture. Right now, there are over 400 classes of objects being defined by various working groups around the world, which include representatives from the AEC industry's top software vendors such as Autodesk, Bentley, Graphisoft, Timberline, Bricsnet, Revit , Microsoft and McGraw-Hill (parent company of construction.com), among many others.

Some software makers, including Autodesk and Bentley, already incorporate an early release of the IFC (version 1.5.1). The independent Building Lifecycle Interoperable Software (BLIS) group (not an IAI project), which was started by its members to speed vendors' adoption of IFCs and push interoperability into the marketplace as fast as possible, will begin releasing products over the coming months that feature the newest version of standard, IFC 2x.

In a group demonstration, BLIS presenters from Microsoft Visio, Graphisoft, Timberline, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash. and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. unleashed the power of IFC 2x by using a flash memory card to pass a building drawing off to one another. They performed design tweaks, executed quantity takeoffs and cost estimates, checked the design against fire codes, and simulated how energy would be used once the structure was built—all with the same data, with no re-keying necessary. As the demonstration progressed, it was clear that an IFC wall was much more than its geometry in a drawing. It was defined in three dimensions by its all of its physical elements (studs, sheet rock, nails), along with attributes added during the course of the demonstration, including the cost of the materials and the cost of the labor needed to erect it, and by its contribution the overall fire safety and energy efficiency of the whole building. By allowing the data contained in the IFC objects to be platform independent, the BLIS group demonstrated just how fast—and how accurate—the design, engineering and construction process can be.

While a great deal of progress has been made in incorporating the new IFC 2x standard into real products (LBNL's EnergyPlus will be available in three weeks, the Timberline Precision Estimating/CAD product is scheduled for a fall release), one question still begs for an answer: Who will drive the adoption of software that incorporates IFCs and XML and otherwise pushes the envelope of interoperability in a traditionally fragmented industry?

Many industry day participants pegged owners as the driving force for interoperability.

Jonathan Williams, principal, Projectives LLC, believes that interoperability will make the transition phase of a project—the hand-off from builder to owner—fast and automatic, optimized and integrated. "Knowledge is built into the project instead of the people working on the building," he said, and added that by using interoperable software, costs and redundancies can be reduced in compiling transfer information. The result is that the facility is up and running faster, ready to rent. He conservatively estimates total project savings of anywhere from 1% to 5%, thanks to interoperability. The challenge is educating everyone involved in the construction process—from owners, architects and facility managers to engineers, contractors and software vendors—about the advantages of interoperability as provided by IFC and XML in terms of time savings, cost reductions, improved accuracy and better buildings.

Some owners have educated themselves. Speaking of what the General Services Administration was doing in relation to XML implementation, Stephen R. Hagan, division head of the National Capital Region of GSA, said that his agency, one of the world's largest owners, is intent on separating content (data) from technology (particular software or hardware platforms) so that data can be sent to any kind of device or software program. Because it is impossible for the sprawling bureaucracy of the US government to standardize on one computer system or software program, the government is standardizing on a data model that facilitates interoperability. Software vendors that ensure that their products are interoperable will have a competitive advantage when it comes to bidding GSA contracts. Hagan also emphasized that vendors that are currently using XML to operate only within their own systems (closed or proprietary schemas), will need to have interoperability with other systems and vendors if they expect to work with the GSA in the future.

John Mitchell, director of virtual building technologies for Graphisoft, agreed that owners like the GSA who adopt an interoperable data model and refuse to become a "bound user of a proprietary product" will lead the way toward industry-wide acceptance of both IFC and whatever XML standard the AEC industry ultimately decides upon.

David Lynn, vice president, real estate and construction, Netfish Technologies, seconded Mitchell. "I hope people learn from the mistakes of the past and avoid the proprietary dead-end," he said.

HOK COO Patrick MacLeamy sees interoperability in AEC software applications as key to streamlining the industry.

To HOK COO Patrick MacLeamy, interoperability is "not a technical issue—it's a marketplace survival issue." He pointed out that owners are already demanding more from architects, engineers and contractors. "Somehow our industry grew up in a fragmented fashion and never had a driver to be a vertically integrated system. Software grew up in separate parts and pieces," with companies such as Bentley and Autodesk developing products for architects and engineers and vendors such as Timberline creating applications for construction.

"Now we use e-mail," the former president of the IAI said ruefully. "Clients are saying that's not good enough: we want to hire architects and want them to minimize time producing and coordinating documents." Owners, MacLeamy said, want the AEC industry to make buying a building as easy as buying a car or a toaster. "Owners are going to drive us to that because they deserve it, and if we don't do it, someone's going to do it for us." He warned that "Boeing doesn't build planes like we build buildings," and suggested that such a vertically-integrated company posed a threat to the construction industry because it has perfected its processes and procedures to the point where it could eventually deliver the kind of project support and services owners are beginning to demand.

"We're saying we can preserve some the diversity of our industry by having open standards," MacLeamy concluded. "We've made a good start and we're going to have a real impact on the marketplace this year, but there's a long way to go."

Photos by Judy Schriener

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