BIM for Construction Handover

Along with the keys, facility managers typically receive many “bankers’ boxes” full of information about their facilities at construction handover. This information is provided in paper documents that describe equipment warranties, replacement parts lists, building system operating instructions, maintenance job plans, and fixed asset lists. Today those who use the information provided must, at best, pay to have the data keyed into the relevant data systems. At worst, facility maintenance contractors are paid to survey the existing building to capture as-built conditions. In these cases, owners pay twice—once for the construction contractor to complete the documents at the end of construction and again for the maintenance contractor survey.

The development of COBIE [Construction Operations Building Information Exchange] demonstrates the benefits that can be achieved using a requirements-driven approach. Through a requirements-drive approach different groups of constituents that exist naturally in our industry today are able to their information needs. These needs are consistently translated into the Industry Foundations Class (IFC) model with appropriate implementation standards that facilitate the capture and transmission of the data. By the consistent definition of each of these groups the answer to the question
“What is a BIM?” can be answered at the level of specificity that allows open-standard interoperability.