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Phase 01 – Briefing and preparation · Building information

Information requirements and data standard

Information protocol · BIM protocol · EIR · LOIN · DSS · IDS

The information strategy says why and with what information your organisation works. Here it becomes a binding brief for a specific project: what exactly the supplier must deliver, in what structure, and by what criteria acceptance is recognised.

When to address this

  • You are about to commission a project you know “will be in BIM”. Your tender documents do not clearly state what information the supplier must deliver, at which milestone, and against what it will be verified.
  • Every designer sends you inconsistent IFC models that cannot be combined. You want to use IFC data in operations, for example in a CAFM tool, and the names, units and structure don’t match. You manage several buildings and cannot compare them because their data is not standardised.
  • You copy requirements from the last project and nobody in the company can explain why they exist and who exactly they help.

Deliverables

Information requirements and their contractual anchoring

  • Exchange information requirements (EIR) as a contract annex
    • Purposes of use derived from the organisation’s information strategy, narrowed down to the specific project;
    • Specification of the level of information need (LOIN), i.e. the building data standard (DSS)
    • Machine-readable form of the alphanumeric information requirements (IDS), building on the IFC standard;
    • Classification and identification of elements and information containers;
    • Structure, formats and processes applied on the project, incl. acceptance criteria
  • Information protocol (BIM protocol)
    • Roles, responsibilities and licensing provisions
  • Review of the pre-BEP document within the tender
    • Verifying that the bidder is sufficiently competent for the project.

Scope can be narrowed

You don’t need a finished information strategy, nor to standardise the whole building at once. Common entry points:

  • EIR for one specific project
  • A standalone BEP review before signing the contract – usually the last moment when something can still be changed cheaply
  • Alphanumeric information requirements for the one group of equipment that hurts the most – typically specific building services (HVAC and related systems)

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