Using product models to represent user requirements

The Service Life/Asset Management project at the Institute for Research in Construction has identified “enabling” technologies critical to attaining the project objectives of optimizing the service life of building envelope components and systems. The preliminary investigation concentrated on the need for close links between the enabling technology of user requirement modeling and those of service life prediction, life cycle economics, maintenance management, and risk analysis. The integrating tool is an information technology (IT), namely product modeling. The current research focuses on modeling of user requirements. There is a rich history in the field of user requirement (performance concept) modeling in the research literature and existing standards documents. However to date, there is no conceptual model and little vocabulary to represent the concepts described in much of this research literature and standards. In addition, the language even in the applicable ISO standards needs additional refinement and more structure. In addition, to our knowledge, very little research has been done to represent these user requirement models in a digital format (i.e. product model). Although “performance” is identified as an attribute in the Building Construction Core Model, this representation is considered to be preliminary by the authors. However, product models can provide the necessary structure and refinement for representing user requirements models. This paper describes a user requirement modeling vocabulary: a language to describe the necessary entities and their relationships. The paper discusses similar systems developed to date; it identifies uses for a user requirement model, and it describes limitations of the proposed model.