COBie – Construction operation building information exchange

The COBie is being used as the medium to communicate all the valid information in standard
procedure as required by BIM and also it is defined by the United Kingdom government on all
the details of the current ongoing construction in the valid format in spread sheet. The main
reason for the adoption of this method is mainly because imaging the scenario every
organization has a separate format for representation of the information. Now due to lack of
understanding the different format time taken to understand them becomes high and complex.
Thus going in for COBie is the ultimate solution to address this issue. The environment used
in this process to share the data for manipulation of information (Reading, writing, altering,
deleting) is called as the “Common data environment”.

Full automation

Thus in this process going in for the COBie helps in offering the automation for the process of
construction by enhancing the process of complete automation of the information management,
the process of exchange of information is much easier in this process leading to decrease in the
cost of information management. Thus the process of controlling all the processes in
construction becomes much smarter than in the past.

COBie spread sheet

The main issue in this modelling is that going in for the COBie sheet, the incompatibility with
certain design and development tools like NAVISWORK and REVIT. Hence these
incompatibilities leads to failure to export and open the COBie files in those applications. The
complexity of the data involved at most makes it impossible to manually enter all the details
of the project in the COBie spread sheet, hence entering the details hands on is not only
complex but also is open to lots of errors as the information are all minute and needs several
levels of checking due to the complexity of the information’s on the project and mainly in-case
of the multisite project where the project happens in several countries around the world the
process of information management becomes complex. Management of all the details of the
project in the higher level becomes impossible when done manually and hence it is essential to
work on identification of the compatible software’s and the versions to ensure the process of
manual data entry are prevented, thus it is essential to plan and integrate every process to ensure
automation and integration in one single place like the common data environment. Thus this is
the place for management of the entire process of construction management namely supplier
management, contractor management, design management, etc. (A unified one stop solution /
platform for all the construction management.) it is essential to ensure the highly compatible
software, data format and hardware to merge with this platform. The plans prepared by the
interior designers, the contracts, warranties, internal and the external construction plans,
government contracts, permits, COBie data sheets of all the building information management
plans are all stored in this process. Thus an alternative replacement for the REVIT is to go in
for the software like the use of other tools which are easily gel with the CDE and the process
of opening the different file formats happen without any errors. (A360 is a suggestion)

Even in my work hands on I felt the same issues and went in for the above suggested
alternatives.

Conclusion

Thus in view of the interior designers, it is essential to use the right tool and the platform which
integrates all the essential aspects like planning, designing, sharing the contracts, understanding
the project updates at any point of time. Thus the process of using the “construction operations
building information exchange” and “Common data environment”; has completely automated
the entire process of project management, planning and designing. All the manual processes
have been completely eliminated in this process.

Integration of the information at one unified place and placing all the design & development at
one place offers reduction of the workload for the designers.