The Infra and Railway Rooms Deliver Major 4.3 Implementation and Validation Report
London, U.K. – 6 September 2021 – buildingSMART International is delighted to announce the IFC4.3 Implementation and Validation Report and related documentation has been produced by the Infrastructure and Railway Rooms. This major piece of work has been the culmination of many years of harmonisation and collaboration between different infrastructure domains such as Road, Rail, Ports and Waterways, Bridge, Tunnel and the Common Schema work.
Since the announcement of IFC 4.3 (IFC 4.3_RC1) becoming a Candidate Standard in April 2020, there have been three follow-up projects designed to implement and validate the 4.3 standard before it goes to Production Standard in October 2021. The IFC Infra Extension Deployment and IFC Ports & Waterways projects have been managed by the Infrastructure Room. The IFC Rail Phase 2 project has been managed by the Railway Room. These three projects also sought to harmonize the properties across all these domains as part of the 4.3 release and to ensure rigorous testing in software. This project is now for active voting and approval before being managed by bSI Technical Services to ensure this standard will be part of the next release of ISO 16739, expected to be final mid-2022 and published by ISO in 2023.
This release has been noted as highly validated and tested by software vendors in collaboration with the project teams and domain experts. The many unit tests for IFC standardization were able to demonstrate technical competence and business needs alike. Richard Kelly, Operations Director commented that “this major piece of work is the result of 10 years of commitment and dedication to not only enhancing international standards for domain specific requirements, but the teams also delivered real harmonization across infrastructure areas and extends the influence of openBIM beyond buildings. This standard will be highly usable due to the huge engagement and overall consensus as proven in these documents. This should be celebrated and acknowledged globally”.
Léon van Berlo, Technical Director commented that “the engagement between the project teams and software vendors guaranteed thorough testing and validation of the standard. The technical capabilities and maturity are exceptional and really align with our aspirations and goals. I dare to say IFC 4.3 will be the best tested version of IFC we’ve ever released”.
Christian Erismann, Project Manager for the IFC 4.3 project said “it was extremely challenging, especially in the last two years with COVID-19. However, the team managed this international project virtually which was impressive. The maturity of the team members and experts allowed us to achieve this ambitious result. It’s the result of a highly motivated and goal focussed team and all connected stakeholders which made this happen by the many contributions. I’m very grateful and proud to all of them.”
About buildingSMART International
buildingSMART International is a vendor-neutral and not for profit body that leads the development of open digital information flows across the built asset industry. Its mission is to proactively support 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. Its members, who range from across the built environment spectrum, collaborate under the buildingSMART organization. buildingSMART is engaged 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) standards achieved ISO approval in 2012.
Press Contact:
buildingSMART International
aidan.mercer@buildingsmart.org
Aidan Mercer, +44 7181-304-3435