Why Need COBie?
The criteria for BIM Level 2 deliverables are actually rather straightforward — the only one that will be a bit of an initial struggle is COBie.
So, what exactly is COBie, and why do we require it?
COBie can be defined as the specification related to the management of information including space and equipment. It is a United States-based specification that is closely associated with BIM (Building Information Modeling) approaches to design, construction and management of built assets.
COBie can be defined as the specification related to the management of information including space and equipment. It is a United States-based specification that is closely associated with BIM (Building Information Modeling) approaches to design, construction and management of built assets.
COBie is the significant differentiation in the UK Government’s strategy. They want reliable data so they can look into the 80 per cent of the cost that is not related to building. It’s the first time the government has made COBie a contractual obligation.
Research conducted on the AEC Value System by Turner and Townsend is given below:
It demonstrates that approximately 3% of the cost of an asset is in its design and only 17% in its construction — so only approximately 20% of the total life cost of an asset is in the design and construction, leaving approximately 80% (not including demolition) lying beyond the involvement of the design and construction team.
The UK Government also hopes that by making our industry an “expert” in how to give good sharable structured data to aid in the operation of an asset, we will be able to export these capabilities to other parts of the world.
There’s been an acknowledgement that asset information is now quite inadequate. This information is typically put together in the final few weeks of a construction contract — perhaps an external consultant is appointed who manically runs around to all the different parties involved getting information, and all that information, even if it’s meant to be collated ‘As-built,’ has a tendency to be poor, and is not put together by the person who generated it — so errors are unavoidable. The obtained information is often housed in many A4 ring binders — and, of course, bits of paper go missing and data is lost over time.
If we can give organized digital data for handover, building operators will be able to manage and operate their constructed assets considerably more effectively. COBie has various aims, the most important of which is that data be collected as it is generated by the individual interacting with it. For example, if an architect declares a space to be an office, no one else will alter that data unless the function of that room changes — it will be carried through throughout design and construction and the life of the structure.
Other industries that have previously digitized have discovered the value of sharable structured data. Take, for example, the World Wide Web, which took off with the introduction of HTML. So our industry’s largest difficulty is learning to deliver non-proprietary, shared, structured digital data — and COBie may be seen of like the training wheels for doing so — it’s simply that piece of data that pertains to OM and FM — so there will be a much wider data narrative. In reality, COBie is a subset of the industry foundation classes or IFC — so, in the future, with a little more research, we will be constructing IFCs, but for now, we have a terrific structure to drill into that 80% of the cost in COBie.
The importance of COBie really lies in comparisons — many people say why don’t we go from authoring software A to FM software Z — they tend to be relational databases where we can map from the bespoke fields in the authoring software to the bespoke fields in the FM software — and that will get you perfectly decent asset data on a single asset. However, there are many tools available — for example, one of our key clients currently uses three standard FM software, and from job to job, they have different consultants using different software — so where you may get decent data for a single asset, you lose the ability to compare multiple assets.
If the industry embraces COBie and eventually IFCs, we will be able to do some pretty fascinating job comparisons. So, whether you have a single asset or multiple assets, you’ll be able to do searches, for example, on a specific boiler type to see how it’s performing across your assets, which you wouldn’t be able to do if you just mapped proprietary software to proprietary software.
So, in summation, we can see that structured sharable data is critical to our sector becoming a 21st-century industry, and I feel that if we fail to do so, other companies that have already digitized will grab and utilize our work as their own.
Visit our website today to learn more about COBie Services and for additional information on how BIMEX may assist your company in achieving Level 2 BIM.
About BIMEX Engineers
We are a multi-disciplinary BIM Consulting firm, that helps our clients design & build better projects with time savings and cost reduction using BIM. With our VDC & BIM Services, we make ourselves responsible to help new firms implement BIM and get full potential in their projects.
