Solutions and Standards
The digital transformation has created many new opportunities but also presented the industry with new challenges. The built asset industry needs an international body committed to creating and disseminating common, open data standards. buildingSMART meets that need.
buildingSMART helps industry visionaries transform the design, delivery, and operation of tomorrow’s assets. International open digital data-sharing standards are critical to this transformation, helping businesses—owners, architects, engineers, contractors, and operators—become global industry leaders while also mitigating risks, saving time, reducing costs, and significantly increasing innovation.
Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) - a set of standardized, digital descriptions of the built asset industry.
Information Delivery Specification (IDS)
Standard for defining and checking information requirements in a computer interpretable form to ensure data quality.
BIM Collaboration Format (BCF)
Standard communication protocol for efficient issue management and coordination on BIM projects.
buildingSMART Data Dictionary (bSDD)
Service for publishing and accessing terms and definitions that describe the built environment to increase data consistency.
Validation Service
Free, online platform for validating IFC files, developed by buildingSMART – with the help of software vendors and bSI projects.
The openCDE Initiative
Portfolio of API standards that includes Foundation API, BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) API, Documents API, and Dictionary API.
Use Case Management Service (UCM)
Enables the capture, specification and exchange of best practices and makes them accessible to the entire built asset industry.
Workflow enablers
Software Certification
A platform for Consistent and reliable implementations of buildingSMART standards for software vendors and applications throughout the global marketplace.
Professional Certification
Internationally recognized program that validates professionals' digital construction skills and knowledge to advance digital transformation in the built environment.
Accelerated Program
Fast-track openBIM into your business with the support of the buildingSMART International network.
The Power of Open Data Standards in Transforming the Built Environment
Open, shareable information unlocks more efficient, transparent and collaborative ways of working throughout the entire life-cycle of built assets. The growing adoption of BIM also allows owners and operators, working with their service partners, to plan their capital investments and understand the likely whole-life costs of maintaining and using those assets for their intended purposes.
The benefits of open data standards are substantial, and include:
- more transparent, collaborative and open workflows
- greater information certainty due to a shared vocabulary of industry terms
- more open procurement processes
- processes that are inclusive for companies large and small
- greater re-use of data
- easier integration with linked data created and shared in related industries
For data to flow easily and for the resulting benefits to be shared, the standards need to be developed collectively by the key stakeholders– from designers and constructors to owners and operators. This is why the processes for buildingSMART solutions and standards development, approval, and certification rely heavily on the global participation of a broad group of experts in their respective disciplines and industries. Since it was incorporated in 1995, buildingSMART has focused on solving common industry problems by collaboratively developing open, neutral, international digital data-sharing solutions and standards for the built industry.
Get Involved Today
Participate in buildingSMART work on the new standards for the industry.
