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Our industry’s ‘trainer wheels’ for sharable structured data is COBie, which is a sub-set of ISO 16739, known to most as IFC. Eighty percent of the cost of a building lies beyond construction and COBie seeks to minimise these costs.

There is already a vocal COBie backlash, but don’t judge COBie just yet. Early adopter projects have struggled to provide COBie data. There is a learning curve for the required skill sets adding to project costs. There are demands to go straight from proprietary BIM system to proprietary CAFM system. Clients are requiring COBie without defining what they require in an EIR or knowing how they wish to utilise the data. Don’t lose sight of the objective: an industry capable of utilising sharable structured data.

Viewpoint employs great people from the construction industry who understand the needs and realities of our customers businesses, so that our company can deliver tools to help. For this very reason, we get it … most of you don’t love COBie (yet!) - and that’s okay, because we do.

As a software company that develops and supports only software for the construction industry, Viewpoint is delighted to have UK construction clients turning their focus to data. The mandating of an ‘open standard’ in COBie has allowed us to focus our efforts on developing the tools construction businesses need to deliver on this crucial data element, rather than needing to balance the approach of Contractor A and Contractor B, as well as contractors X,Y, and Z. We provide software to many of the UK’s biggest and best contractors. If there had been no attempt to standardise the Level 2 BIM deliverable then 2016 would have been a ridiculously unachievable target. We love COBie as it is a bold step forward for the construction industry, but best of all, it is going to work.

We have invested heavily in our BIM initiative for over four years, winning government funding to accelerate our work, and employing the best people; and the last year has largely been focused on making the delivery of COBie viable.

At the very core of our approach to COBie are four concepts: Define, Monitor, Validate, and Record. Only if these processes are followed will a client be able to use the COBie data produced with confidence. We see our common data environment as a place where everybody can see which data is expected of them and when it is due, how to create and validate the data, and how much is left to do to get through the next information exchange.

Viewpoint’s COBie Planner (part of our Information Planner tool) lets the user define what elements of COBie are required, from whom, and when. This COBie plan can be used by the Employer to populate the Employer’s Information Requirements (EIR) COBie deliverables, and by the construction team to populate the COBie portion of the BIM Execution Plan (BEP) - both key requirements for a Level 2 BIM project.

At each work stage, our Red, Amber, Green (RAG) Reporting system keeps the team abreast of progress using the familiar 4Projects by Viewpoint notification tools, as well as our validation tools that ensure data entry is in the format expected. We have also partnered with Solibri to provide round-tripping using the BIM Collaboration Format (BCF). Through this method, each contributor is taken directly to the appropriate place within their model to make any necessary adjustments.

Supply chain members can enter their data into 4Projects via any Internet connection either directly into the COBie Database, or by uploading their portions as an Excel spread sheet. Our database can federate COBie inputs into a single COBie output. The COBie database is separate from the Model, ensuring that models keep data lean and usable. Each COBie data exchange is recorded and data can be carried forward from exchange to exchange.

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