Effective maintenance and engineering management is rooted in accurate data on facility operations and conditions that managers need to make critical decisions. Managers generally must rely on data stored in CMMS databases from existing facilities, but in rare cases, they are able to inherit data on the condition and operations for newly constructed facilities. This handover process can give managers important data on which to base their decisions, and now they have an updated resource to ensure the success of that process.
The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Building Information Management Council (BIMC) recently announced it is planning to release COBie 3.0, an update to the Construction to Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie 2.4) specification. COBie 3.0 also will be published as part of the upcoming version 4.0 of the National BIM Standard – United States.
COBie is a U.S. national specification of facility handover requirements based on original research by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. NIBS further developed this specification, which describes the information required for facility operations and maintenance upon completion of a building project relating to the commissioning and handover of building systems and equipment.
“NIBS and the BIMC have collaborated with buildingSMART International for many years to create specifications and standards for the building industry,” says AC Powell, NIBS president and CEO.
buildingSMART International (bSI) leads the development of industry open standards for information management and data exchange for implementation by software vendors in applications used by architects, engineers, contractors and owners in the design, construction, management and operations of buildings and infrastructure. COBie uses both the buildingSMART Industry Foundation Class schema and buildingSMART FM Handover Model View Definition under creative commons license from bSI.
The NIBS BIM Council has focused on capturing the requirements of U.S. building owners to document best practices and provide guidance on the adoption of digital technology to increase productivity and performance.
Dan Hounsell is senior editor of the facilities market. He has more than 25 years of experience writing about facilities maintenance, engineering and management.
