OGC and buildSMART alliance

04 January 2008, 12:24pm

Wayland, MA, January 4, 2008. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC ® ) and buildingSMART alliance TM have issued a call for sponsors from the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner, Operator (AECOO) community for a testbed to advance progress on communications interoperability for Building Information Models (BIM) over the
building and capital facility life cycle.

Sponsors define interoperability requirements to advance testbed objectives including the development of use cases, technology bjectives, and schedule.

Sponsors contribute resources - funding, personnel, and facilities.

Testbed roles are defined in OGC's and buildingSMART alliance's presentation to attendees at the Fall 2007 AEC-ST Conference about the AECOO Testbed that is available at:

http://nbims.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=1276.

In the OGC's OWS-4 initiative, conducted in 2006, participants advanced specifications relating to CAD/GIS/BIM integration. During this testbed, it was demonstrated that commercial BIM software and other web service based commercial products containing OGC standards could produce interoperable software solutions. A number of organizations involved in OWS-4 agreed that the scope and urgency of standards related to BIM as applied to the building lifecycle warranted a separate new initiative.

Founded in 1994, the OGC has developed a unique and proven testbed-driven consensus process for rapid development of interoperability standards in the geospatial information technology domain. OGC signed memoranda of understanding with the National Institute of Building Sciences in 2005 and with the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) in 2006. In 2007, OGC became a member of the buildingSMART alliance. OGC works with all three organizations to strengthen open standards-based systems interoperability used by the capital facilities infrastructure community and the broader geospatial, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) and information technology (IT) communities. The AECOO Testbed will build on these relationships as well as OGC's relationship with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and other AECOO community and private organizations. The AECOO Testbed will address both spatial and non-spatial concerns.

Work is now underway to define the nature and scope of the Testbed. Organizations having interest in sponsoring are invited to contact the OGC and the buildingSMART alliance at

aec-techdesk@opengeospatial.org.

Deadline for contact is January 31, 2008.

The OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 350 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC
website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.

The buildingSMART alliance is a program of the National Institute of Building Sciences. BuildingSMART alliance was established to

1)coordinate the profound constructive changes coming to the fragmented real property industry in North America;

2) be the coordination point for fund raising and uniform marketing of member programs; and

3) provide a centralized process for strategic planning, resource allocation and decision making for the member programs.

Our collective goal is open interoperability and full lifecycle implementation of building information models. The focus is to guarantee lowest overall cost, optimum sustainability, energy conservation and environmental stewardship to protect the earth's ecosystem. The buildingSMART alliance is a participating organization of the worldwide International Alliance for Interoperability. The IAI-NA is one of 13 chapters of buildingSMART® and is a committee of the buildingSMART alliance. Visit the buildingSMART alliance website at

http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org.

www.opengeospatial.org

Geo: International