INTEROPERABILITY OF BUILDING INFORMATION: MYTH OR REALITY?

INTEROPERABILITY OF BUILDING INFORMATION: MYTH OR REALITY? Dr. Guillermo Aranda-Mena and Prof. Ron Wakefield School of Property, Construction and Project Management RMIT University GPO Box 2476V Melbourne, Vic 3001 Australia ABSTRACT: The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimated the cost of inadequate interoperability within Property, Construction and Facility Management Industry at $15.8 billion per year. These costs were incurred by the capital facilities industry and represented between 1-2% of its cross-market revenue. Based on project lifecycle phases, the breakdown of these numbers revealed that the highest costs were incurred at the operations and maintenance phase directly followed by construction (NIST, 2004). According to the Institute, interoperability is "the ability to manage and communicate electronic product and project data between collaborating firms' and within individual companies' design, construction, maintenance, and business process systems." Interoperability and Building Information Modelling (BIM) are intrinsically linked. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a model-centric management system that can capture, manage and present data in ways that are appropriate and customary for a particular designer, contractor, vendor or client (Ibrahim et al., 2003). BIM is steadily gaining industrial acceptance as a replacement of documentation-centric Computer Aided Design (CAD). BIM has multiple representation protocols that are all facing similar barriers to adoption including: commercial, organisational and regulatory barriers (Drogemuller and Hampson, 2004). With the advent of the semantic web this paper questions the future and current shortcomings for Industry Foundation Classes. It also identifies (1) the value of interoperability to the industry and, (2) the key economic incentives for the adoption of Building information modeling. The model is then discussed with industry and business experts. Identification of relevant drivers and barriers for BIM adoption are discussed in relation with Roger s (1995) Diffusion Model. Results are expected to assist the effective uptake of BIM. 1 INTEROPERABILITY: CAN WE AFFORD TO IGNORE IT? 1.1 The concept of interoperability The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines interoperability as "the ability to manage and communicate electronic product and project data between collaborating firms' and within individual companies' design, construction, maintenance and business process systems." Yum and Drogemuller (2000) defined Interoperability as the ability to exchange/share information between separate computer programs without any loss of content or meaning. The formal birth of interoperability in relation to Property, Construction and Project Management (PCPM) can be tracked back to 1995 when a group of 12 companies created a series of prototype interoperable software applications (Wix and See, 1999). The intention of the IAI is to define common language that is used to specify buildings and their attributes in electronic format which serves as a common language for data sharing/exchange specifically to the property and construction sector. Other protocols such as the Standard for the Exchange of Product Model (STEP) for the manufacturing sector have been into place since the mid 80 s. However the IAI was the first to provide a sector oriented interoperability. Although the uptake for interoperability is shown to be slow this is generally not attributed to the technological issues but not to human issues including: changes in work practices, structures and processes. Individual knowledge issues such as skills, training, interpretation, trust, age and so on are also an issue. Amor (2002) reported on the socio-technological barriers to the adoption of interoperability in Property, Construction and Project Manage-

ment. Today the main issues in adopting interoperability are perceived to be of ontological nature including: meaning and interpretation. For example misplacing objects from libraries based only in geometry such as the case of a roof slab with the same dimensions as a concrete bench (i.e. Google searches could also exemplify this point where the word jaguar not necessarily denotes a feline but a luxury car). For interoperability to perform, it requires the creation and management of project data that is both intelligent and well organized. This means an extra burden on draftsmen, architects and engineers. Grilo et. al. (2005) reported on the introduction of a new profession into the industry which is the interoperability consultant or building modeler. As the intent is the sharing of information via improved communication and collaboration across all project participants and across all the phases of building lifecycle, to succeed with interoperability commitment is expected from all stakeholders in a project. This has proven to be a difficult task as all project organisational and individual participants need to be commited towards the concept of interoperability. Amor and Farag (2001) suggested that the first step towards this is perhaps the use of 3D CAD parametric software. Building information and building models will have to contain the accurate information which would also require the right tagging for documentation, for example, making sure that a chosen object representing a slab is in fact a structural element and not a door or other element. Khemlani (2004) identified that at its current state the property and construction industry is lacking of competitiveness and efficiency and argued that although interoperability is not the panacea to get rid of the waste happening in the sector it can certainly reduce it by improving planning and communication in order to predict site problems. He argued that competitive interoperability seems like something that could develop into a core value. The industry can not afford the level of waste and mis management that it currently tolerates. Interoperability may lead to solutions but it will not to happen by chance. This is exemplified by the slow ersponse until now from software vendors. 1.2 Ignoring interoperability has its cost. Is interoperability actually worth the trouble? Various official reports and publications have reported on the cost of ignoring interoperability among software systems used in the construction industry such as design tools [CAD], project programming, costing and scheduling tools. According to the NIST report, in the US alone the cost of not having interoperability is $15.8 billion US. Although these calculations and their metrics may not always be accurate it is clear that not having software talking to each other is costly and wasteful. This certainly contributes to an industry that is well known for being wasteful and inefficient. Although the companies and professionals could save and improve practices by adopting interoperability it seems is not but the property owner and operatorsthat are the participants in the process and are most likely to receive major benefits of adopting interoperability values and technologies. The following figures indicate the estimated loss by individual professions and to building owners (NIST 2004). Architects and engineers in the planning, engineering and design phase of projects loss equals to $1.007 billion. Annual cost to general contractors in the construction phase alone to equals $1.265 billion Annual cost to building owners during the operations and maintenance phase equals to $9.027 billion based on the sum of new construction annually plus the cost to maintain existing building portfolios (due to the problems associated with post-occupancy information management and information accessibility which seriously hamper efficient facilities management). The question arises as to who is to drive the agenda for interoperability. Is it for the client to drive the innovation in his own interest? Currently there are several examples of the implementation of interoperability during the design and construction phases of a building. Some documented projects can be found in reports such as PM4D by Fischer and Kam (2000) which includes various case studies of projects carried out in Finland by its National Technology Agency (TEKES). Other testimonials and case studies can be found in journal and conference publications (i.e. Architectural Engineering and Design Managment, IT Con, or CIBW-78 conference proceedings) which in most cases illustrate new building projects, however compelling cases of as built models and their use in facilities management are still rare. In Australia the FM Exemplar project (Morris and Ballesty 2006) was conceived to explore the potential of BIM to better run the Sydney Opera House. 1.3 Internet based BIM, interoperability and copyright. It has been well studied for over a decade that the key to improve productivity in construction relies upon more efficient and effective information management. In relation to electronic information management, especially in the form of web-enabled building information modeling, this means managing and coordinating not only blue prints but all documentation and project information from de-

sign to property maintenance phases. This presents a unique and new opportunity to a diverse industry as property, construction and project management. It is expected that electronic information management can provide commercial efficiencies through more effective project procurement and supply chain management. Two new developments have seen the shift from static CAD to intelligent building-modeling. The first development is Internet enabled CAD and the second is Object Modelling as a network enable environment. Finch et. al. (1997) identified over a decade ago the potential of Internet enabled object modelling. This principle is now giving rise to many new services previously tied to the physical value chain and has resulted in completely new value chains are being created. Including online simulation, visualisation, prototyping, and codes and specification checking. Internet developments are offering new collaborative tools and environments enabled by new Web technologies. CAD has perhaps also been a major problem as drawings have been invariably committed to a hard copy version at numerous if not at every stage of a construction project. Even today transfering files between different systems remains a difficulty. This is striking as Interoperability [the transfer of files without the loss of information] has been possibly for at least last 10 years ever since data protocols such as STEP and IFCs where first introduced. 1.4 Estandards for interoperability. From a technical side, for interoperability to be possible, there is a need for standards or protocols. A standard protocol is about having a common language for software packges to be able to talk to each other. There are currently various protocols for interoperability. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs) and the Standard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP ISO) are the best for interoperability in the construction and property sectors. However outside our sector domain, the semantic web is a major ongoing initiative for the exchange of information and the way to understand such information (ontologies). The response of the IAI / IFCs for Internet-based exchange methods was ifcxml (extensible Markup Language) (Nisbet and Liebich 2005) and the semantic web to improve representation and interpretation issues. 2 INDUSTRY FOUNDATION CLASSES Industry Foundations Classes is a protocol for interoperability. Arguments to support IFCs based Interoperability are as follow (Tarandi, 2003): Automatic compilation of bills of material in digital form as indata to cost estimations and time scheduling. The quantities can then be used for production preparation and on call deliveries from the manufacturers. (savings shorter time and fewer errors) Automatically generated foundation for climate and energy simulation of all the spaces. (savings shorter time, better solutions and energy savings during the lifetime) fewer co-ordination errors (savings reduced redesign and re-construction) 2.1 When did IFCs appear? The IFCs has been available in construction for over 10 years. Since the emergence of International Alliance of interoperability (IAI) in 1995, the first generations of IFCs have appeared starting with IFCs 1.0 in 1997 and with the successive implements of IFCs 2x edition 2, released in May 2003 (Tarandi, 2003) more recently ifcxml (Nisbet and Liebich, 2005). 2.2 What are IFCs? IFCs is a comprehensive representation of the buildingmodel and it is also a set of rules and protocols of how you define the data describing the building. Industry Foundation Classes is a data protocol that seeks to create a common international object library repository. IFCs is the response to building and construction to what STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data) was to manufacturing, both being International Organisations for Standardisation (ISO) standards that arose out of collaboration between several industries. The standards were developed to facilitate consistency of use (Kim, 2004). 2.3 How IFCs work? According to Tarandi (2003), A product model based design presumes that the actors work and think in 3D during the whole process. One is building the virtual building, implying the need for construction knowledge among the designers making the modeled building. This represents a challenge to our current industry structures and raises issues to as whether there is a need for a building modeller or interoperability professional in the industry? With co-operation built on common shared information in e.g. a product model server, one can achieve better precision in product definition through:

Documented and traceable user requirements from space program via space planning to the individual spaces in design, production and maintenance, Co-ordination between the design results from various disciplines, Simplified evaluation of requirements using more frequent simulations of alternative solutions. More effective project management based on: Current and complete information better planning and control. Current documents related to the different parts of the building. Visualization in 3D and 4D for design, construction and customers. 2.4 ifcxml the new generation The reason behind ifcxml is to have more intelligible information online. This is expected to alleviate the many of the problems relating to information maintenance (Berners-Lee et. al. 2001). XML is especially important to make sense of all information available across the Internet. This is not only building information modelling but all information in general needs to be designed to enable machines to interpret information. XML is currently a formal recommendation to make the Web a more versatile tool. XML is similar to HTML. These two contain markup symbols to describe the contents of a page or file. HTML describes the content of a Web page only in terms of how it should be displayed and interacted with. For example </div> which stands for space division or </body> which refers to main paragraphs. XML stands for extensible Markup language (XML) and works by tagging normal text XML. It should make semistructured information more intellible. </WordDocument> the meta-tag indicates a source of reference Jaguar </motor vehicle> the meta-tag indicates attributes to a noun. With this in mind information can be referred to a better context. This means the creation of documents with semantic tags that software agents can classify and identify context and information. ifcxml refers to the content of IFCs constrained by the XML standard (Nisbet and Liebich 2005). (ISO-130303 part 28). The effect of this is to create a recognizable and consistent representation that can be anticipated when reading and must be achieved when writing ifcxml models. The most recent ifcxml files are those that validate against the ifcxml for IFC2x2. Ontology refers to issues related to the interpretation of information and the protocols for interoperability particularly relate to how information is coded, represented, accessed, queried, shared, and ex-changed on the Internet. The semantic web aims to address this issue. Semantic Web (SW) is a term coined by Tim Berners- Lee with the goal to make data on the web more machine-interpretable (Berners-Lee et al, 2001). The main goal is to make the current Internet more intelligent by enabling computers to perform knowledge intensive tasks using the Internet as a resource. Schevers (2006) pointed that the semantic web provides a standardized framework that allows data to be shared and re-used across applications, enterprise, and community boundaries. A set of technologies forms the basis for the Semantic Web framework. Languages such as XML, RDF (Resource Description Framework) (Brickley and Guha, 2004) and OWL (Web Ontology Language, 2004) enable the marking up of data using declarative statements making the data more machine-interpretable. The difference between these languages is the predefined mark-up statements, which increases the expressive power. Amor and Farag (2001) presented twelve views on misconceptions about Interoperability. In their paper they provide critical feedback onto how Interoperability can be delivered, including myths and expectations. What these protocols are allowing is a transition from static building models to dynamic and intelligent building information models. 3 BARRIERS TO INDUSTRI FOUNDATION CLASSES ADOPTION Various barriers to the adoption of IFCs have been previously identified. Amor and Farag (2001) reported on the problems related to misconception on Interoperability including: Object oriented modelling as the complete solution, Single data models/repositories, Models misrepresentating reality. Roger, (1995) identified the factors affecting the adoption of innovation to include:

socio-cultural factors (the social system, meaning, values and attitudes), organisational-structural factors (qualities of both within a firm and contractual relationships with other firms or project parties), communication factors (including both the type of communication channel and the mode of communication), economic factors (market structure and market behaviour). Some of these are discussed as follow: 3.1 Social Barriers For the purpose of this paper barriers and enablers to the adoption of Building Information Modeling and in specific BIM can be related and located to diffusion theory. Diffusion of Innovation is a model developed by Rogers (1962 in 1995) that is considered seminal to the modelling the uptake of innovation not just in technology but in the uptake of new practices in society. His major publication is Diffusion of Innovations (1962). Roger s theories provide a framework to understand the processes of adoption of innovation. Ways to represent this include the S-curves for representing the process by which attitudes and knowledge of an innovation is transmitted through communication channels. The two main variables in Rogers (1995) modelling consider time and the members of a social system. The elements included: The innovation being an idea, practice or object that is perceived as new. Communication channel, this refers from interpersonal networks and mass media as the means by which messages about the innovation gets from one individual to another. Time: the timeline comprises the innovationdecision process, the relative time with which an innovation is adopted by an individual or group and innovation s rate of adoption. The social system: a set of interrelated units that are engaged in joint problem solving to accomplish a goal. Within this framework diffusion is largely measured through the degree of adoption within a social system. The adopter categorisation includes (Rogers, 1995): 1. Innovators; 2. Early adopters; 3. Early majority; 4. Late Majority; and 5. Laggards. The above categorisation takes place in a timeline as a temporal process. This is, diffusion happens in time, whilst other key elements depend on their specific qualities such as the attributes to social interactions and communication channels. The previous attributes differ in relation to their levels of impact, for example, communication channels vary in importance according to the type of adopters. For example, mass media and expert knowledge has more influence on innovators, whereas personal networks are more important for late adopters. According to Roger s model, the innovation process is one through which an individual passes from: 1. First knowledge of the innovation; 2. To forming an attitude to the innovation; 3. To making the decision to adopt or reject the innovation; and 4. To implementing the innovation; and confirming the decision taken. Other authors followed Roger s innovation diffusion model providing alternative scenarios on explaining adoption phenomena including Bass Innovation-orimitation model (in Rogers 1995) which indicated that the spread of a new technology depends mainly on two factors: 1. Innovation, or 2. Imitation. Innovators are driven by their desire to try new technologies or methods and the likelihood of an innovator using a new technology dos not depend if peers, competitors or the number of other users. Whereas imitators are more dependent and easily influenced by the behaviour of their peers. Bass model describes that the likelihood of an imitator to embrace a new technology or a new way of working is directly related to the number of people who are already using it. Imitators are the best agents to innovation diffusion and they related to people in early and late majority adopters. This aligns to that of Roger s however it differs in the level of predictability, this is Bass does not deal with the time variable [thus S-curves] in the same manner as the innovators group are expected to suddenly adopt innovation. As a third theory or model in innovation adoption we include Moore s complexity and interrelation of various influences on both the organisational and the individual roles in the diffusion of innovations process (in Rogers 1995). 3.2 Copyright and intellectual property. When sharing a BIM issues of intellectual property and legal and security concerns remain unsolved. For example when consultants such as architects produce and

transfer models to the client should the client would be required to pay a regular fee for the use and regular update of the model to assits in facility management (FM) operations? 3.3 Software developers and vendors. Newcomb (2000) argued that interoperability does not go in the best interest of software vendors. Software vendors basically don't like information to be interoperable, even though it serves the best interests of their customers. One way to attempt to stamp out the whole concept of interoperability is to undermine the meaning of the word interoperable, so that the concept will afterwards not even have a name. Nonproprietary protocols are an innovation designed to alleviate this problem. Some of these protocols are discussed as follows. 4 IFCS THROUGH VARIOUS DIFFUSION MODELS This section locates IFCs within three adoption models with the intent to provide insight on IFCs uptake by the larger industry. The discussion in this section only intends to develop a framework for possible future measurement on the uptake of the IFCs. For this it develops three hypothetical scenarios on the adoption of Industry Foundation Classes as viewed through three models. 1. Rogers model, 2. Bass model and 3. Moore model. 4.1 Viewing IFCs through Moore s Chasm phenomena 4.2 Viewing IFCs through Bass Innovation-orimitation model. The innovation and imitation model describes a scenario where the differential innovation-imitation shapes the speed at which the technology is adopted. In this scenarion the uptake takes place by innovation or imitation factors. For instance, when home appliances such as the PC are taken largely by a group of followers there are other times where artifacts such as fry pans are said to be adopted by the innovators - i.e. for their utilitarian benefit. The adoption curves for this two are very different. Bass model has been used to predict technology introduction rates from a set of estimated values for the innovation and imitation factors. Such values can be dimensioned from comparable technologies or processes previously introduced. The prediction of IFCs interoperability in the context of this model would suggest that if IFCs are to be successful, a large innovative group of software vendors and software users will adopt IFCs technology with out waiting for success demonstration. This group is risk takers statistics show that the industry is risk-adverse as this is a more traditional industry than say, manufacturing. However the maturity level is there (CRC for Construction Innovation 2005) and there is a clear push from governments of various countries such as Singapore and the US with agendas to acelerate the uptake of Building Information Modeling. 5 CONCLUSION As the central question to this paper is: Figure 1 Viewing IFCs through Moore s Chasm phenomena application for software vendors and users. According to Moore s model, adoption is not progressive and predictability difficult. According Moore s Chasm the IFCs adoption curve might just suddenly fall (dotted red). This would be the worst case scenario. IFCs saw a very high hype curve but its uptake has taken its time. Will Industry Foundations Classes eventually become the standard for interoperability? The discussion and concluding remarks revolve around a series of questions to promote discussion of the International Alliance for Interoperability in specific the uptake of IFCs by the larger property, construction and project management industry. Most of current efforts look along transitional evaluative steps for uptake. Can we envisage a picture of future of IFCs, the question is if thing will remind along this lines in 10 years time. On the other hand it has been discussed that IFCs is based on outdated ideas where central databases where central to interoperability. Current R&D agendas are looking at self organizing or federated models. Although the timing of this technology may appear to be long, this should not be a problem as long as the industry can facilitate enablers. Larger research and development agendas

outside the construction and property domain will perhaps provide a push toward interoperablity. The sematinc web is one of them. Perhaps the success or failure of IFCs lies in the client s factors and environment factors. The challenges faced in IFCs are not only on hard issue, e.g. the challenges with the advent of Semantic web, but also on the soft, e.g. client s willingness to adopt new technology, organisation expenditure on investment on developing and maintaining the software, cost of training the staff, organisation strategy on technology adoption, culture, policy factors, pressure from competitors in market. Some factors that affect the adoption of IFCs are intrinsic, others are extrinsic. The former can be the technological limitations of IFCs on some aspect, e.g. it is developed for computers to share the common data, thus limited in interpreting the semantics from the data when compared with human being. The latter can be a management issue in organisations. IFCs semantics are not enforced nor follow rules i.e. it is possible to specify an IFCs beam and use it to create a park bench. This is because IFCs is just a data sharing format and not an ontology. As to where ontology was defined, a disagreement onto whether IFCs represent an ontology or not is a matter for discussion ifcxml is expected to improve this as above discussed. Software vendors are providing their own answers to interoperability and providing more intelligent Building Information Models. Increasingly they can connect without the need of IFCs. These developments represent a challenge to the future of IFCs. This problem to convey standardisation reminds a main threat to the future of IFCs. The question here is whether IFCs will eventually take off and the answer may rely on whether or not IFCs matches the client s requirement, and whether there are any other alternatives better than IFCs. As for engineering and architectural consultants who are still provididng occasional service at this point in time the client want complete off-the-shelf solutions? It is perhaps for property owners and property operators from the private and public sectors to drive the agenda for interoperability as according to financial studies it is in the best of their interests. Current type of service long term contractual arrangements such as Public Private Partnerships should push the agenda. There is only space for one. The question at this stage is whether IFCs will become the industry standard for interoperability? Although IFCs has certain limitations, IFCs have achieved some level of success and there is a major ongoing agenda. Rather than developing something from scratch, the answer to future may be to develop something based on IFCs. It is not an exclusive situation. It is hard to predict which technology is better, it all will depend on the context or industry you locate it. 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