Information Delivery Specification (IDS)

Machine Readable Information Delivery Specification

An Information Delivery Specification (IdS) is a computer interpretable document that defines the Exchange Requirements of model based exchange. It defines how objects, classifications, properties, and even values and units need to be delivered and exchanged. This can be a combination of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), Domain Extensions, and additional classifications and properties (national agreements or company specific ones; either stored in bSDD or somewhere else). This is the standard to use to define your Level of Information Needs. It brings validation of IFC to the client, the modeler and the Software Tools that perform (automated) analyses. It is a core component that can be used as a contract to deliver the correct information. It holds the ability to create localized and use-case specific requirements for your projects and asset portfolio. The IDS is the solution for predictable and reliable data exchange workflows.

Your contract, your validation mechanism, your quality assurance

The project is a collaboration between 60+ people from all over the world. End users, standardization bodies and software vendors are part of the team.

Technical info is available on https://github.com/buildingSMART/IDS

 

An IDS will:

  • be able to specify requirements for properties, materials and specific classifications;
  • be able to link to URIs with more info. For example bSDD content or PDTs;
  • be computer interpretable (as in: a computer should be able to process it without human intervention) to be able to load into authoring tools to facilitate both users and software tools to generate, validate and correct mapping of internal data to the desired output;
  • be computer interpretable to allow automatic validation of IFC against the requirements;
  • be based on industry standard technologies to work with generic parsers (update: regular expressions have been chosen for this);
  • be extendable.

The first phase of the IDS project is lead by Cyrille Pennavaire, BIM Manager from Heijmans (general contractor). This phase was focused on gathering use-cases and user requirements. It set out the principles and produced a first version. Results are published here.

The second phase will focus on supporting software vendors with the implementation of the draft (result from phase 1). Focus in this phase is on implementer agreements, stable implementations and more examples and tests.

The work is coordinated by dr. Sara Omrani and Robin Drogemuller from QUT.  Please contact ids@buildingsmart.org for more info.

 

Updates:

  • Summer 2022: The IDS has reached 0.9 and is starting the process to reach Candidate Standard status from buildingSMART.
  • January 2022: Vendors are now implementing the latest version of IDS, testing it and creating more examples. The plan is to present results at the General Assembly for implementors (end February) and the Summit (end March).
  • November 2021: A kickoff for IDS Phase 2 is scheduled. This phase will focus on implementation by vendors into final products. It will contain the further development of how to define units/datatypes, developed more examples, document the mapping to IFC, document the storylines for use in practice, and possible implementer agreements. The goal of phase 2 is to get consistent implementations of IDS in software. If you are a (professional) software vendor and want to join, please contact ids@buildingsmart.org. Joining is free (as in: no cash contribution required), but we do expect commitment and contributions.
  • September 2021: First implementations of IDS provided feedback and updates.
  • Summer 2021: Detailed project plan for phase 2 of the IDS project is created and submitted to buildingSMART Standards Committee.
  • May & June 2021: Version 0.4 is published as a draft. Use of XSD restrictions is integrated and all use-cases have been tested to confirm they can be represented with this version.
  • April 2021: More examples are published; vendors are implementing the draft version of the IDS and preparations are made for the next phase of the buildingSMART project.
  • March 2021: First draft for the XML standard is published on GitHub and standards page.
  • February 2021: Development roadmap with first examples is published.
  • January 2021: a 5 month period of use-case analysis has been finalized.
  • August 2020: the project starts with use-case analysis and existing technology evaluation.