The AEC Industry is based on the collaboration of several parties during the project life-cycle, and the success of projects depends on exchanging information between stakeholders on a timely manner. IOIS aim to increase the sharing of information between partners. Some years back, researchers promised that IOIS would be used “to enhance construction project documentation and control and to revolutionize the way in which a construction project team conducts business” (Nitithamyong and Skibniewski, 2004: p. 492).Despite the benefits brought by the extensive use of IOIS, these systems are still lacking on the aspect of integration. The author has the experience of working with some of this IOIS (shared FTP portals in USA and document management systems in Germany and Spain) and they all seem to be mostly used just as online repositories of documents that all stakeholders can access. Without disregarding what the existing IOIS have accomplished – reduction of email based communication, safe storage of documents, improved communication, etc - it seems that another shift in the way things are done is needed.
BIM could be the key approach to adopt to ensure this integration and shift from the document paradigm to the Integrated Database paradigm happens. On this line of thought, the International Alliance for Interoperability [IAI] has been developing since 1995 a standard for sharing building and construction industry data. This standard has been named Industry Foundation Classes [IFC] and it follows on the work done with STEP for Product Models. Although IAI’s mission is to “support open BIM through the life cycle” (IAI, 2010a), their holistic approach to BIM encompasses many other aspects of the project delivery process. Their Information Delivery Manual [IDM] (IAI, 2010b) considers, in addition to the IFC] standards, a methodology to support the implementation of BIM, addressing the business processes and information exchange requirements.
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