Standards Development

Scope

This project aims at defining and formalizing the compatibility policy of EN ISO 16739-1 revisions through a consensus between ISO experts and liaison organizations representatives (including buildingSMART International and Small Business Standards).

It may also develop tools such as decision trees, or check lists to help evaluate the compatibility of a new revision with previous ones.

This document will not formulate requirements, but may provide recommendations. It may also ask ISO TC 59/SC 13/JWG 12 and buildingSMART International some evolutions of their agreement, in order to facilitate the implementation of its recommendations.

Purpose

EN ISO 16739-1 (IFC) is the primary interchange format for the building and civil engineering sector, developed by buildingSMART International (bSI) and submitted to ISO for adoption. Its latest revision, edition EN ISO 16739-1: ed 2 covers the needs of the rail, bridge, harbour and road industries. This second edition is currently processing the FDIS balloting and, if successful, will be published beginning of 2024.

The pace of new versions of IFC, not only the major releases submitted to ISO, is accelerating, and each new version raises compatibility questions.

The current ISO IFC compatibility policy is partial (e.g., it does not apply to all aspects of the IFC specification, such as property and quantity sets) and might not be ambitious enough to meet the needs of the industry. It is not explicitly stated today, which compatibility strategy is in place for the different major and minor releases of IFC.

A compatibility policy is always a matter of balance between innovations and stability. Reaching a consensus on this policy between ISO experts and the liaison organizations representatives could help the adoption of IFC by the industry and guide the future adoption of upcoming IFC releases by ISO.

There is a general understanding among ISO experts that the ISO IFC compatibility policy needs improvement. This had been expressed during the DIS ballot of the second edition and the observations to such comments recommended a more explicit policy.

By today, the ISO and liaison organization representatives don’t have a consensus on how serious the current situation is and on what should be done to improve it. Therefore, the scope of work for the report shall include:

• Agreement on a common vocabulary (e.g., backward, and forward compatibility)

• Developing a common diagnostic of current compatibility demands

• Developing a common assessment of the level of compatibility among current and foreseen IFC releases

• Agreement on the scope of the compatibility policy, regarding the specification (only schema, also property and quantity sets, in addition informal propositions, etc) and regarding the serialization (ISO 10303-21, XML following ISO 10303-28, others) and potentially new forms of data sharing,

• Defining the applicability of compatibility request to different release versions, replacements by a new edition, or additions of other parts to the ISO 16739 series, and the compatibility duration for this

Compatibility policy should also be an integral part of the release strategy of buildingSMART, as the A-liaison organisation developing IFC and submitting newer editions of ISO 16739 for adoption, differentiating between major and minor releases and addendums and technical corrigenda, each imposing different constraints in regard to compatibility. buildingSMART is eager to include ISO experts sharing their expertise on such compatibility demands.

SBS shares the concern that SMEs are very concerned by the current ISO IFC compatibility policy, but large companies would also benefit from an improved policy.

Both SBS and bSI fully support this New Work Item and will contribute to it.