The IFC/COBie Report 2012

The Government is committed to Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the use of open-standard data so that the construction industry can deliver greater value and be more efficient. The open-standard data format required for level-2 BIM is defined in the Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) data schema. COBie allows information about buildings to be organised, documented and shared in a standardised way. It is particularly helpful to those who come to manage a building.

We wanted to test whether the buildingSMART IFC file format was capable of supporting the creation of COBie datasets and we did this by running a trial with a number of Tier 1 contractors.

• Read our report of the findings (PDF:1MB)
• Read the foreword from Ian Chapman, Head of Specification, NBS
• Read the thoughts of Dave Jellings, Director, OPEN BIM Network
• Read the thoughts of Nick Nisbet, Director, AEC3 UK. Advisor to UK Government BIM Task Group
• Read the responses from BIM Technology Alliance (BTA) to the UK Government's drive for COBie
• Further reading:
  • BIM Task Group COBie page
  • Bill East's COBie page
  • NBS article on "What is COBie?"

This report was conducted in association with the OPEN BIM Network