A Review of Industry Foundation Class (IFC) Based Data Exchange Model

Complexity in today’s construction projects necessitate comprehensive proficiency in various divergent domains. These domain-specific professionals usually work with software solutions that are highly specialized which often do not provide adequate means of data exchange with other software products. However, the building industry has collaborative atmosphere that involves repeated, iterative data exchanges and communication. To automate information processing there is a need of standardized and qualified data for efficient working processes. IFC provides vendorindependent and open building information models to capture and exchange data. This chapter presents an introduction to the IFC and emphasizes its utility in all the stages of a project by illustrating its application in design, construction and operation & maintenance stage.

Keywords: BEM, Compliance checking, Cost estimation, IFC, Progress monitoring, RFID, Work space management.