Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)

At its core, buildingSMART enables the entire built asset industry to improve the sharing of information throughout the lifecycle of project or asset. By breaking down the silos of information, end users can better collaborate and cooperate regardless of which software application they are using. buildingSMART’s technical core is based around Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) which was ISO certified in 2013.

IFC is a standardized, digital description of the built asset industry. It is an open, international standard (ISO 16739-1:2018) and promotes vendor-neutral, or agnostic, and usable capabilities across a wide range of hardware devices, software platforms, and interfaces for many different use cases. More about IFC, its uses and adoption may be found here.