AIA4ALL - development of open, modular and automatable employer’s information requirements (EIR) and BIM execution plan (BEP)

Status

ongoing

Motivation

The Employer's Information Requirements (EIR) is a manual (BIM specification) for the digital project management of construction projects and thus a component of the tender, which is directed at the contractor commissioned. Essentially, it describes who has to deliver which information to whom at what time and in what quality. Use cases that are usually required in an EIR are:

• Data and inventory collection
• Progress control, quality, defect and change management of digital building models
• Coordination, scheduling and data drops at the interfaces
• Collision check in the coordination model
• Creation of renderings
• Documentation (as-built) and usage for operation and maintenance

The BIM execution plan (BEP) builds on the EIR (German: AIA) and defines the collaboration of all parties involved in the project, in terms of content and strategy. It shows the implementation of all project-specific objectives of the AG as well as to outline how the AIA is to be implemented by the CO.

If the EIR is the "BIM tender specifications", the BEP corresponds to the contractors' "BIM engineering specifications", with the BEP being continuously updated during the project. While the EIR is generic (e.g., role: architect), the BEP is concrete (e.g., person: Ms. Müller, company: Architekturbüro Müller). However, synergies only arise when EIR, BEP and the BIM model behind them are precise, free of contradictions and, above all, machine-readable.

Contents and goals

Goal 1: Increase the quality of planning and execution in the construction industry as well as the digitization rate by overcoming knowledge gaps and barriers in the digital planning process

Coordinated, unambiguous and uniform requirements for a BIM process are defined, which bridge knowledge and process barriers and thus indirectly lead to an increase in the digitization rate and quality in the Austrian construction industry.

Currently, clients often have the impression that BIM causes additional costs. The project will counteract this by making the advantages of BIM visible and giving the clients low-threshold access to EIR creation: all content developed in this project will be made available on the platform free of charge and can thus be used freely to gain experience in working with an EIR.

Goal 2: Definition of a generally applicable method for the creation of an EIR (German: AIA) process description taking into account the FAIR principles

The exemplary use cases serve to develop a generally valid method according to the FAIR principles, for the creation of further ones. This process description of modular, automatable & reusable EIRs for the whole life cycle of a building will be elaborated & provided free of charge to the construction industry. This will lead to automation of EIR in the digital process chain planning/execution/operation.

Goal 3: Develop a platform to create open, machine-readable client information requirements (EIR)

Develop a prototype platform that implements the workflow for creating EIR (German: AIA) use cases. Two developed use cases are available fully implemented & can be used to generate & download text blocks, IFC definitions, configuration files for authoring tools (e.g., Revit), checking rules & scripts for an EIR.

Stakeholders serve as early adopters to use the platform as the project progresses & contribute their own insights/issues. This guarantees that the prototype meets the demands, needs as well as the practicability of the construction industry & will be used in the future.

Goal 4: Testing and implementation of the modular EIR based on two concrete use cases.

Two concrete use cases will be agreed, defined & tested, i.e., user stories described, process descriptions created, missing IFC properties (including LOI, phase authoring information) defined, necessary text modules for the EIR document developed & implemented in the platform prototype.

The two use cases include:

• Information requirements and digital verification process for BIM model based heating and cooling load calculation or heating and cooling energy demand.
• Information requirements and digital review process for Technical Monitoring in the early design phase of the project.

Goal 5: Automated coupling of EIR via pre-BEP to BEP.

Structure & preparation of the use cases will enable automated rules to be derived in the future, depending on the criteria, & machine-readable text modules to be generated as EIR according to the FAIR principle. This leads to a closer coupling of the EIR via the pre-BEP to the BEP, ensuring data continuity, redundancy-free & without loss of information between EIR & BEP.

Methods

Digitization is still far from being implemented in the building sector; EIR and BEP (German: AIA & BAP) are essential factors for continuous, genuine digitization. In order to be able to consistently demand the requirements of the clients and evaluate the achievement of objectives, these must be formulated in objectively measurable objectives that can largely be evaluated automatically. This is not the case today; the EIR is free text that lacks essential digital properties:

• Mechanisms for automatic implementation of the requirements
• Verification of the quality of the implementation
• Templates for AGs to simplify the design of an EIR
• Modularity of the individual use cases

This project bridges the gap between existing tools that perform automated checks in the BIM model and information requirements that are very superficial in current EIRs. The task is to formulate these requirements in a clear and consistent way, not too specific (and thus only valid for one project), but still accurate and redundancy-free, so that automated processing is possible; ISO 29481-1 will come to application in this context.

The complexity of this task is to provide textual descriptions for the actual EIR (German: AIA) document as well as alphanumeric requirements in the EIR in a modular way, so that the result can be used for a large number of projects but is also an efficiency-enhancing tool for the various project partners in planning, construction and operation, facilitating digital collaboration.

Project management

AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH

Project or cooperation partners

• buildingSMART Austria, Zentrum für offene Datenformate und Digitalisierung
• e7 Energie Markt Analyse GmbH
• Plandata GmbH
• Technische Universität Wien-Institut für interdisziplinäres Bauprozessmanagement

Dr.DI.Zucker, Gerhard
Giefinggasse 4
A-1210 Wien
Tel.: +43 (505) 506 591
E-mail: gerhard.zucker@ait.ac.at
Web: www.ait.ac.at