The COBie data format and the UK government's BIM strategy

A recent article I have written about the COBie data format is now up on theNBS.com:

• theNBS.com - What is COBie?

In June 2011 the UK government published its Building Information Modelling (BIM) Working Party Strategy. This report announced the Government's intention to require collaborative 3D BIM (with all project and asset information, documentation and data being electronic) on its projects by 2016. The software and data requirements for this detailed in the report are Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie).

The article examines COBie and discusses the role of CAD and master specification systems in creating this data model. It is aimed at construction professionals who work on government projects and clients in the private sector interested in this approach.

In the article, I also have the thoughts of a number of those behind this strategy:

• Paul Morrell - Chief Government Construction Advisor
  "For the first year, the total software requirement is Excel"
  
• Mark Bew - Co-chair of the government strategy team
  "The reasons for selection [of the COBie data format] were pragmatics around cost, availability and forward compatibility with IFC to start the process of building a useful built asset legacy dataset"
  
• Nick Nisbett - Co-author of the COBie data format
  "The argument that drives the demand for COBIe is the management of 'space usage', 'operations', 'cost and environmental impacts', 'repair' and 'replacement' . In short, better value, cost and carbon"

So, hopefully the article is a decent read - please feel free to add comments below here about it - theNBS.com - What is COBie?

(And at the last minute I managed to resist the terrible pub "COBie or not COBie?, that is the question!" as a title for it)