A more collaborative environment through a Building Information Modeling (BIM) based collaboration platform

A BIM-based collaboration platform will be developed to support the whole life cycle of a building renovation process (model generation, engineering tools, configuration of design alternatives, monitoring system, etc.). This platform will serve as a central data repository, where each stakeholder can access the required information at the right moment and collaborate with other stakeholders, overcoming the traditional fragmentation of construction industry. Furthermore it will facilitate the decision making by providing a web based 3D BIM viewer linked to different data along the process and showing different project indicators. The information associated to the model will span several vertical domains (time, cost, energy…) and will be workflow-aware. The web interface will be adapted to the role of each stakeholder and accessible from multiple devices (laptop, smartphone or tablet).

The platform will be based on Open BIM standards and the interoperability of heterogeneous software tools. Thus, the central information repository will rely on IFC, the mainstream BIM standard, on top of which additional standards can be added (e.g. BCF or BIM Collaboration Format). Both IFC and BCF are internationally approved standards, maintained by buildingSMART®. Public interfaces will be developed to enable to connect external tools to the platform in a standardised way, such as design, simulation or knowledge based tools, and allowing collaboration and data exchange in commonly agreed formats.