Digitalisation enables huge opportunities for the world's construction industry. Benefits are increased productivity, reduced costs and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment. Standards will play an important role in reaching these goals.
This was part of the rationale when, upon invitation, the ISO/TC 59 and SC 13 leaderships submitted a potential digitalisation use case to the ISO SMART programme - now IEC-ISO SMART - earlier this year.
Background
Digitalization enables huge opportunities for the world's construction industry. The benefits are increased productivity, reduced cost and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the built environment. Standards will play an important role in reaching these goals.
There is a need for digital construction product information. This will allow users to connect different specifications, requirements or properties with multiple sources of documents like standards, codes, product specifications, contracts, building information models (BIM) and other information sources. Specifications, requirements or properties of a service or a product must have precise interpretations. Use of reference libraries in this context play a very important role to enable trustworthy mappings between the user's specification and the relevant requirements in standards. This will act as a single source of truth (SSOT).
Data dictionaries
ISO 12006-3 specifies a language-independent information model which can be used for the development of dictionaries used to store or provide information about construction works. It enables classification systems, information models, object models and process models to be referenced from within a common framework.
There is a need for open and neutral data dictionaries based on ISO 12006-3 where each property has a globally unique identifier (GUID), which is machine readable. This will enable a trustworthy digital exchange of information. buildingSMART Data Dictionary is an example of such a dictionary.
There is also a need to identify the construction products and systems that make up buildings, and about which assertions of compliance are made. A machine-readable, persistent digital identifier for construction products, that provides access to metadata and which includes information about compliance, will enable all stakeholders to accurately reference the products they are specifying, sourcing or maintaining in buildings, throughout the value chain.
A key purpose of digital construction product information is to facilitate the comparison of product properties digitally, between similar products from different manufacturers, between requirements specified in a model, requirements defined in regulations, etc.
Product data templates
ISO 23387 is a standard that defines the data structures for data templates for the construction sector. A Product Data Template (PDT) contains information about a construction product and its properties. Many of the terms and definitions for the product itself (e.g., a window) and its properties (e.g., fire resistance) are defined in standards. Many products can share the same properties. Describing the properties anew for each PDT will lead to a multitude of interpretations of the properties and a lack of harmonization. The preferable solution is to get a property definition from a single source. This source would be a data dictionary.
ISO/TC 59/SC 13 has developed a standard for how such dictionaries should be structured (ISO 12006-3) when supporting Building Information Modelling for the construction sector and a standard for how properties should be developed and maintained in a dictionary (ISO 23386).
The project proposal would be to develop a dictionary based on the mentioned standards that will meet the needs from the construction industry stakeholders that develop PDTs. This requires that relevant content in new standards is assigned GUIDs and that this content along with corresponding GUIDs can be digitally transferred to and accessed from the data dictionary.
The newly published ISO 22057 is an example of a standard where GUIDs have been assigned to relevant content. So far, the overviews of GUIDs are available in the form of Excel spreadsheets linked to in the standard's Annexes. The Excel files again are made available in the ISO Standards Maintenance Portal.
Terms and definitions from the ISO 6707 series, ISO 9229 and ISO 7345 are examples of standards with content suitable for such a database. While these are vocabularies, it would also be necessary to incorporate content from other types of standards, such as test standards, classification standards and product standards.
Market and users
Today, with standards available in levels 0-2 (paper, PDF and simple XML tagging), any data retrieved from the standards will have to be handled manually. This is not only inefficient and costly, but it is also a significant source to errors.
Examples of actors that would be affected from the proposed solution:
- Construction product manufacturers
- Constructors
- Clients
- Asset owners
- Asset users
- Asset operators
- Software companies
- ISO and national standardization bodies
- Contractors
- Architects
- Consulting engineers
The content of the data dictionary can be used by construction product manufacturers to complete product data templates in order to create product data sheets for each of their products, and these could again go into product catalogues. This information should be freely available to the market.
Digital product data sheets or product catalogues will enable users such as clients and constructors to search for products that have the exact properties needed for their projects, knowing that the information is reliable. It will facilitate construction product e-commerce and assure that the documentation provided is trustworthy. Having this information available digitally will enable direct use in advanced BIM applications.
Digital product data sheets will create many possibilities. For example, information about a product can be added to the product itself, such as casting an RDF chip within a concrete element. This will facilitate future reuse of products where the properties are already documented. This will also be useful to ensure good waste management when the building is demolished.
Conformity assessment
Digital, trustworthy construction product information will allow for efficient assessment of both conformity to the requirements in standards as well as compliance to laws and regulations.
Content development
If ISO considers that this proposal should be further developed and piloted, the leaderships of ISO/TC 59 and its SC 13 will propose that the task should be given to SC 13, whose scope covers this:
SC 13 is charged by TC 59 to focus on international standardization of information through the whole life cycle of buildings and infrastructure across the built environment
- to enable interoperability of information;
- to deliver a structured set of standards, specifications and reports to define, describe, exchange, monitor, record and securely handle information, semantics and processes, with links to geospatial and other related built environment information;
- to enable object-related digital information exchange.
It will be important to inform and involve the other subcommittees as the work proceeds.
Referenced standards
ISO 12006-3, Building construction — Organization of information about construction works — Part 3: Framework for object-oriented information
ISO 23386, Building information modelling and other digital processes used in construction — Methodology to describe, author and maintain properties in interconnected data dictionaries
ISO 23387, Building information modelling (BIM) — Data templates for construction objects used in the life cycle of built assets — Concepts and principles
ISO 22057, Sustainability in buildings and civil engineering works — Data templates for the use of environmental product declarations (EPDs) for construction products in building information modelling (BIM)
ISO 6707-1, Buildings and civil engineering works — Vocabulary — Part 1: General terms
ISO 6707-2, Buildings and civil engineering works — Vocabulary — Part 2: Contract and communication terms
ISO 6707-3, Buildings and civil engineering works — Vocabulary — Part 3: Sustainability terms
ISO 6707-4, Buildings and civil engineering works — Vocabulary — Part 4: Facility management terms
ISO 9229, Thermal insulation — Vocabulary
ISO 7345, Thermal performance of buildings and building components — Physical quantities and definitions