Designing a Framework for Exchanging Partial Sets of BIM Information on a Cloud-Based Service

This paper reviews the rationale for using a partial data set in Building Information Modeling (BIM) exchanges, influenced by the recognized difficulty of exchanging data at element or object level which depends on the information requiring compatible hardware and software, in order for the data to be read and transferred freely between applications. The solution was not to introduce a new schema in contrast to the industry’s existing open exchange model ‘Industry Foundation Classes’ which has been in existence since the 1980’s, but for the authors to re-engineer an existing Simplified Markup Language ‘BIM XML’ into subsets via XML Style Sheet Transition. The language of XML was chosen because Web services, which are developed from XML data representation format and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) communication protocol, are platform neutral, widely accepted and utilized and come with a wide range of useful technologies. Furthermore, they support Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) – the internet platform that enables interoperability between different software programs. The methodology involved developing a full hybrid research model based on mixed methods, ‘quantitative and qualitative’, interlaced into two main phases. The first phase comprised of a main survey questionnaire, focus groups, two Delphi questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and a case study. The final phase, ‘product design and testing’, used semantic methods and tools, such as Business Process Management Notation. The final case study (a prototype test) successfully itemized the potential of combining three applications asynchronously in real-time. The interoperable capabilities of Web services APIs for exchanging partial sets of BIM data enabled assumptions with a higher amount of detail to be reviewed at the feasibility design stage. Future services will be built upon existing Web Ontology languages such as SPARQL descriptions to be used in conjunction with several web services connecting together on a Cloud platform to produce a knowledge ‘Semantic Web’. Designing a Framework for Exchanging Partial Sets of BIM Information on a Cloud-Based Service