CMD First Source

Interoperability Workshop Brings Together Technologists from Europe and North America

Alexandria, Va. (May 12, 2008)_ The Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) recently teamed up with the buildingSMARTalliance™, buildingSMARTNorway and the International Code Council (ICC) to present the first-ever IFD Library/IDM/IFC Workshop in the United States, which took place April 6-8, 2008, just outside of Washington, D.C.

The workshop provided a comprehensive overview of buildingSMART core technologies:

• Industry Foundation Class (IFC) 
• International Framework for Dictionaries Library (IFD Library)
• Information Delivery Manual/Model View Definition (IDM/MVD).

The conference drew nearly 50 participants, including representatives of government agencies and codes and standards organizations, as well as application developers, standards developers, information technologists and information publishers.

“The sponsor organizations are committed to promoting integrated technology that facilitates the open exchange of building information,” said buildingSMARTalliance Executive Director Deke Smith. “This meeting brought together technologists and practitioners working to create standards that will make it easier to share object-oriented information across different applications, an essential step to supporting the widespread use of Building Information Modeling.”

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CSI Releases Draft of UniFormat for Public Comment

Alexandria, Va. (April 1, 2008)__The Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) has released the first draft of a revision to the 1998 version of UniFormat for public comment. The construction community is invited to comment on the draft. All comments received before June 15, 2008, will be considered by the UniFormat Task Team. The draft and can be obtained at www.csinet.org/uniformat.

UniFormat provides a uniform classification system for organizing construction information into a standard order, based around functional elements. Functional elements, often referred to as systems or assemblies, are major components common to most structures that perform a given function regardless of the construction method or materials used to achieve that function. Because the functional element classifications provided by UniFormat are standardized, users can easily understand and compare project information across project types or options. The use of UniFormat can also provide consistent comparable data across an entire building life cycle. The use of UniFormat’s elemental framework reduces the time and cost of evaluating alternatives in the early design stages of a project, assuring faster and more accurate economic analysis of alternative design decisions.

CSI plans to publish a revised version of UniFormat close to the end of 2008, after the review comments have been received and analyzed by the task team and others involved in the process. This revised version of UniFormat will be coordinated with MasterFormat 2004, but will only cover building construction topics. The following year, the task team will work to expand UniFormat subject matter to cover all types of construction.