Modularized Validation of a Building Information Model According to the Specifications of the Facility Management Handover and Cobie

Abstract

With increasing requirements and complexity in building projects, diverse domain experts employ a neutral file format, which is exchangeable and interoperable among heterogeneous BIM authoring tools and applications in diverse disciplines. The Construction-Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) is a set of the specifications of building data exchange pertaining to building asset information. For interoperability, COBie is defined as a model view, which is the subset of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema. For ensured interoperability of BIM data, using COBie model view, domain professionals and software developers need to identify 1) whether their IFC instance files include required information on building asset management and 2) whether their IFC interfaces accurately import/export IFC files according to the COBie specifications. However, since no approach currently supports this validation testing, professionals manually evaluate an IFC instance file and their IFC binding processes in order to identify semantic errors, technical problems, and translation mapping issues. To enhance the efficiency of this time-consuming and labor-intensive evaluation process, this study proposes a validation framework for evaluating IFC instance files pertaining to the conformity to the COBie specifications. In addition, this study formalizes the requirements of the COBie model view using identified rule logic. For validation, rules are implemented on a modularized validation platform developed on top of the IfcDoc tool, which is a model view documentation and validation tool.