Product Data Management for Sustainability: An Interoperable Approach for Sharing Product Data in a BIM Environment

Abstract

Several research and development projects in the construction industry show the need of coherent product libraries to ease information sharing among involved stakeholders. In these projects, designers are often the main actors addressed in the creation and fruition of such product libraries. Besides designers, the presented research addresses the needs of manufacturers, clients and users. To achieve this coherence of product libraries, there are issues such as standardisation of product data templates, numerosity and heterogeneity of products categories, interoperability in sharing data and scarce thrust of manufacturers in developing extensive libraries. Considering the European directives and regulations, manufacturers are required to provide detailed and structured information about their products, e.g. in the form of CE marks and/or Declaration of Performance (DOP). Hence, developing data structures that are already compliant with CE marks and DOPs information requirements improves manufacturers’ capability of promoting their products. Moreover, this makes clients and users aware of provided information, giving them the possibility of comparing performances of different products and consequently choosing only those products that fit better their needs. The aim of the here described research activity is twofold: defining a common data structure for product data and using existing technologies to share these data. The presented research proposes a conceptual model for providing such structure for product data to facilitate Product Data Management (PDM). This structure relies on standardised Product Data Templates (PDT) and Product Data Sheets (PDS) for enhancing the sharing process within to a Building Information Modelling (BIM) environment. Moreover, an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) structure has been developed for transferring product data allowing a machine-readable exchange of information. The result of the described research is the definition of information requirements for developing an online product library that permits a user-friendly consultation by stakeholders and an automated extraction of data by software.

Management and environmental sustainability – guidelines for architectural and engineering design firms

“…From De Paula and Melhado (2012), SASBE: Effects of the environmental sustainability demand on the building design stage were identified: participation of new agents such as the sustainability certification consultant, changes in the design contractual agreements, inclusion of environmental requirements, use of new technologies related both to building solutions and design activity, recognition of the design stage and integrated design. It was rather surprising to find the interviewees were not realizing the challenge of managing the design with environmental sustainability demands related to design process definition, WJEMSD 17,4 (continued ) As can be seen from the literature review (Kamari and Kirkegaard, 2019;Cecconi et al, 2019;Lucky et al, 2019;Pavan et al, 2019;Wall and Hofstadler, 2019;Andersson and Eidenskog, 2020;Theißen et al, 2020;Sameer et al, 2020;Chan and Lam, 2020;WSBE, 2020), BIM is no longer an emerging topic, but a current one contributing to achieving buildings' sustainability goals and performance requirements.…”

“…As can be seen from the literature review (Kamari and Kirkegaard, 2019; Cecconi et al , 2019; Lucky et al , 2019; Pavan et al , 2019; Wall and Hofstadler, 2019; Andersson and Eidenskog, 2020; Theißen et al , 2020; Sameer et al , 2020; Chan and Lam, 2020; WSBE, 2020), BIM is no longer an emerging topic, but a current one contributing to achieving buildings' sustainability goals and performance requirements.…”

“…Previously, the relation between management and sustainability was demonstrated. Another relevant topic is the contribution of BIM to sustainability (Azhar et al , 2011; Park et al , 2012; Bynum et al , 2013; Cecconi et al , 2019; Lucky et al , 2019; Pavan et al , 2019; Wall and Hofstadler, 2019; Sameer et al , 2020).…”

Rumo à definição de ‘Product Data Templates’ nacionais para aplicação generalizada em contexto BIM: Esforços da CT197

“…Existem alguns trabalhos na bibliografia sobre normalização de PDTs [1], [5], [14]- [16], no entanto não se focam nos processos de criação de PDTs nem disponibilizam conjuntos alargados de PDTs para uso generalizado [9], [17]- [19]. Apesar das evoluções reportadas, existe ainda pouco trabalho dedicado ao enquadramento normativo mais recente, que conta com documentos tão recentes como 2020 no caso da EN ISO 23386.…”

Requirement management in a life cycle perspective based on ISO 19650-1 and CoClass as the new classification system in Sweden

“…There have been several studies in the AECO industry highlighting the importance of coherent product libraries to facilitate and clarify the information exchange between different parties. Such coherence can be achieved by overcoming some challenges such as standardization of product data template, heterogeneous product categories, interoperability in data exchange and lack of manufacturers' contribution in developing extensive libraries (Lucky et al , 2019). In this regard, a number of promising standards such as ISO 23386 and ISO 23387 are recently introduced concentrating on the need for product data templates in the life cycle management of buildings.…”