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3.10.1 Problem Identification

The COBie Guide limits the scope of COBie to information about “the scheduled equipment, products, and spaces that appear on design drawings.” [NIBS-6] – Underlining added for

emphasis. Schedules6 are a widely used approach for documenting attributes about building

and some C/I components. There is most likely a correlation between the things that are the subject of schedules and the things that are treated as manageable assets.

This is not always the case in C/I. Managed assets include things like pavement which is not scheduled on civil design drawings nor even easily discernible from the models, if only line geometry is available,.

3.10.2 Discussion

Interpreting the COBie Guide statement above too literally may be the problem. It has been suggested that the intent instead was to merely provide an example of the kind of information appropriate to COBie. Furthermore, the Guide is only informative. Therefore “schedule” should not be taken as a requirement but instead as a suggestion. Still, this does not help C/I much since schedules there are not as prevalent as for buildings.

Perhaps the closest C/I analogy to the schedules used in buildings might be the “pay items” that are used to quantify, estimate, bid, track and pay during design and construction [HA-1]. The breakdown of the pay items varies with the life-cycle stage. A designer may use linear feet of a particular diameter and type of drainage pipe as a single pay item. The contractor may need to break this down into excavation based on depth, bedding, pipe, backfill and possible restoration, each constituting a separate construction phase pay item. The asset manager may have yet a different view.

Can pay items be used to formulate the notion of C/I managed assets? Or conversely, should an asset management approach, introduced earlier in the life-cycle, dictate a need to schedule more C/I pay items?

3.10.3 Recommendation

This is an industry issue involving civil design/construction documentation. Advances in design modelling, particularly in 3D will impact this, as it begins to focus on the “things” that comprise the model, rather than just the “lines” on a 2D drawing that are hard to interpret automatically as managed assets.

6 Schedules are tables which document component attributes, typically included on design drawings for buildings. Herein, “schedule” follows this definition as opposed to the notion of scheduling activities along some project timeline.

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3.11 Problem 11: Stakeholder Requirements

Several representative stakeholders have been interviewed to gain their C/I requirements for COBie. Most of their concerns have already been included the initial 10 problems. This section discusses some of them in greater detail to provide a context for the previous discussions.

3.11.1 Crossrail

Crossrail is the largest infrastructure project currently underway in Europe. Crossrail Limited (CRL) is a (temporary) company positioned between the project design and construction contractors and the eventual owners of the constructed facilities. As such, CRL is responsible for the construction-operation handover information exchange for the project.

CRL has developed an asset identification standard [CRL-1]. In addition to laying out the asset requirement / fulfilment dichotomy discussed above in Problem 2: COBie Schema, it contains location codes and a functional hierarchy extension to Uniclass.

CRL is in the process of developing Asset Data Dictionary Definition Document (AD4)’s for functions (e.g., Building Structure [CRL-2]) and asset classes (e.g., Pumps [CRL-3]). The former specify which asset classes are assigned to each function and how those assets will be identified and labelled. The latter define what information the contractors must supply to CRL for each asset of that class beyond the generic attributes [CRL-4] required for all assets. CRL will then pass along this information to the future owners and operators.

CRL is assessing options for how to supply asset information to the operators and maintainers of Crossrail. One option was presented at Fiatech last year as illustrated below [CRL-5]:

Specific, system generated spread sheets are being used to transfer information to/from Tier 1/2 Contractors. CRL is discussing options for linear assets with the various stakeholder organizations.

3.11.2 Tube Lines

Tube Lines owns and operates three of the subway (tube) lines in London. They are developing Asset Capture Forms (447). Assets are grouped together based on the type of information stored for each. There is a single spread sheet design for each group. All of the information about an individual asset occupies a single row in the appropriate Tube Lines 447 spread sheet. As evidenced by the TLF-447 spread sheet [TL-1], Tube Lines has already realized the need for locating components by linear referencing. Their asset spread sheets include columns for LCS coded sections, start and end chainage (distances along based on a chainage LRM), and start and end offset. They are currently assessing what would be the best LRM for their data suppliers as well as for their asset management system (see Appendix B).

Tube Lines has also already tried to address the C/I classification problem (Problem 9:

Classifications). They have developed an extension to the Uniclass classification system to

address rail [TL-2].

3.11.3 Highways Agency

The UK Highways Agency is the Executive Agency of the Department for Transport (DfT) that is responsible for operating, maintaining and improving the strategic road network in England on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport.

The Highways Agency has published a comprehensive list of contract pay items, based on their Method of Measurement for Highway Works (MMHW) [HA-1]. This certainly could be the basis for classification of C/I roadway entities.

The Highways Agency has established an Approved Network of their highways, segmenting them into Sections based on uniform criteria [HA-2]. Offsets are defined using Cross Section Positions (XSPs).

The agency’s Asset Data Management Manual Provider Requirements (ADMM) “sets out the Provider’s mandatory deliverables to achieve the Employer’s asset data management outcomes.” [HA-3]. For example, Appendix E covers Carriageway Inventory Assets:

Carriageway Inventory Assets refer to those assets that appear on or alongside the carriageway excluding structures, drainage and geotechnical assets. The IAM IS is the master data set for Carriageway Inventory Assets inventory, construction and condition data.

Appendix E specifies that point Carriageway Inventory Assets are located by geospatial point location (XY) and linear referencing (section, chainage, and XSP). Polygon assets are located similarly, where the point is the centroid of the polygon asset. Linear assets are located using linear referencing (section, start and end chainage, and XSP).

Appendix E then lists the types of Carriageway Inventory Assets and provides a list of characteristics about each asset type. These include whether it is a point or continuous (linear) asset, whether an XSP offset is required, whether geographical coordinates are required, whether it is contiguous, replaceable or exclusive, and whether it can have multiple disparate locations.

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3.12 Problem 12: Software Products

3.12.1 Problem Identification

If COBie is to be an information exchange file for transferring information from a contractor to a facility owner (asset manager), then the contractor, or designer before him, must have software that can automatically generate the COBie file (Export to COBie). The possibility of doing this manually has already been discussed in Problem 1: COBie Spread Sheet Format where it was determined that this would be most feasible with a more user-friendly software front end to the COBie file. Similarly, the owner must have software that can automatically read the file and ingest its content into the owner’s asset management system (Import from COBie).

3.12.2 Discussion

Several software products successfully completed the January 2012 COBie Design Challenge for Architectural Design and Coordinated Design by automatically populating a COBie workbook from design drawings, a 3D model, and related business data [NIBS-10]. These products were specific to buildings as was all of the data. Many building design software packages already support IFCs, so the mapping to COBie is relatively straightforward.

A separate FM Challenge was held in March 2012 to test whether any asset management software was able to read and make sense out of the data contained in the spread sheets. At that time C/I facilities were outside of the scope of both of the challenges, both from a read and write perspective.

3.12.3 Recommendation

Once the necessary COBie C/I augmentation is defined and validated by the interviewed stakeholders, then work on the demonstration use cases can proceed. Eventually future COBie Challenges could be held to determine how successful the proposed changes are and how well C/I design/construction and asset management software can read and write the new files.