buildingSMART International and the Industrial Digital Twin Association Sign Cooperation Agreement
London, U.K. – October 1, 2024 — buildingSMART International (bSI) and the Industrial Digital Twin Association (IDTA) are pleased to announce their intention to cooperate on a not-for-profit basis to promote open digital interoperability within the built environment. This collaboration will focus particularly on the use of the IFC, industrial digital twins, and the role of the Asset Administration Shell (AAS).
The cooperation aims to enable and encourage seamless digital integration across various domains and will connect experts from both communities.
Key activities of this agreement include:
- Identifying potential topics for closer collaboration.
- Cross-inviting representatives to selected meetings and events.
- Engaging in joint marketing and promotional activities, such as joint press releases and cross-participation in external events.
- Exchanging information and publications to align on relevant topics.
- Participating in mutually beneficial activities.
- Providing mutual status updates and alignments at the leadership level to ensure complementary approaches and avoid duplication of work.
- Sharing user needs to inform the development of future standards, such as IFC 5.
Clive Billiald, Chief Executive of buildingSMART International, commented, "We are thrilled to begin this journey with the Industrial Digital Twin Association. We see this as an important strategic cooperation that will advance the work we are both doing. By combining our expertise and resources, we aim to drive forward the digital transformation of the built environment. This collaboration will not only enhance interoperability but also pave the way for innovative solutions that benefit the entire industry.”
"The collaboration with buildingSMART connects the models of industrial production with those of the building sector. Together, we are creating interoperability across industry boundaries, which will be of immense benefit to the entire industry and will serve as a model for further collaborations with related sectors,” says Meik Billmann, Managing Director of IDTA.
About buildingSMART International
buildingSMART International is a vendor-neutral and not for profit body that leads the development of open standards that support digital information flows across the built asset industry. Its mission is to proactively engage industry participants who want to develop open standards for planning, design, procurement, assembly and operation of buildings and infrastructure worldwide. It provides the international network plus the necessary technical and process support to develop consensus based open standards. Its members, who range from across the entire built environment spectrum, collaborate under the buildingSMART organization and management. buildingSMART also partners with other international standards bodies such as ISO, the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Its core Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standard achieved ISO approval in 2012.
The Industrial Digital Twin Association e.V. (IDTA) was founded in September 2020 on the initiative of Plattform Industrie 4.0 and 23 organisations from the electrical and digital industry, mechanical engineering, the software sector, and end users.
The IDTA is the first point of contact for the standardised Digital Twin and offers all industrial organisations a platform for participation. The aim is to establish the Digital Twin for components, machines, plants and entire factories as an open source technology and to develop it further together with industry.
The core technology for the implementation is the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), that enables quick and easy access to data over the entire life cycle thanks to standardised software structure, interfaces and semantics using current security mechanisms. The AAS has already enabled, among other things, the realisation of a digital nameplate, the simple provision of the CO2 footprint of an asset or the comprehensive asset management in production plants.
The AAS is currently being internationally standardised in the IEC, in accordance with IEC 63278. It is a central component in the Catena-X project, which describes the data space of the future automotive supply chain, and is also set in the future Manufacturing-X project, the data space of the manufacturing industry.
https://industrialdigitaltwin.org/en
Media contacts:
Aidan Mercer, Marketing Director
buildingSMART International
+44 7181-304-3435
aidan.mercer@buildingsmart.org
Sabine Schilling, PR- and Communication Manager
Industrial Digital Twin Association e.V. (IDTA)
sabine.schilling@idtwin.org