Developing an interoperability framework for building information models and facilities management systems

Despite the fact that the value of extending Building Information Modeling (BIM) implementation through the operations and maintenance phase is simply to reduce the operations and maintenance costs associated with inadequate interoperability, facilities management information flow is neither automated nor seamless. Facility managers do not normally use BIM models data, since they claim that BIM models either do not include their information requirements, or contain a huge amount of superfluous data which makes the data exchange process tedious and overwhelming. Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) is developed to improve the facility data handover and to support facilities management systems. However, COBie add-in existing applications have their inherent limitation to generate all facilities management required data, particularly spare, resource and job data sheets, in which a manual data entry is still required. Through a series of interviews with industry practitioners, this paper analyses current data exchange practices as well as proposed a conceptual interoperability framework for seamless data exchange between BIM models and facilities management systems. A proposed database information system that automatically generates a rich COBie spreadsheet by linking BIM data models via the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) model to facilities management information provided by various sources. The proposed framework supplements the existing body of knowledge in facilities management domain by providing a system that facilitates seamless data transfer between BIM and facilities management systems. Facilities management organisations and owners can use this approach to decrease the redundant activity of manual data entry and focus their efforts on productive maintenance activities.