Specifiers' Properties Information Exchange (SPIE)

ORGANIZATION: USACE/NASA/OBO/NIBS/SCIP/CSI

Chair
Bill East
bill.east@us.army.mil
(217) 373-6710

problem

Despite staggering advances in computing technology in the last thirty years, the selection of building material, products, and equipment has remained virtually unchanged. The buildingSMART Alliance has begun a project that promises to forever change the way that building materials, products, and equipment are designed, discovered, specified, purchased, delivered, and installed.

objective

The objective is to create open schema used by manufacturers to export product data into a format that can be consumed by designers, specifiers, builders, owners, and operators. The objective of this project is not to create yet another electronic catalog. This project enhances efforts manufacturers have already made in the areas of e-marketplaces and standard bar codings.

scope

While there are many types of properties found on current catalog and product literature, this project focuses on properties needed for specification, discovery, selection, and verification of products against those specifications. To kick-start this effort the Specifications Consultants in Independent Practice (SCIP) and Construction Specification Institute (CSI) participated in the development of a very limited prototype of these templates. To move these templates from their current concept stage to associations and manufactures are invited to join the project and allow the buildingSMART alliance to help facilitate this effort in your market segment. The project will also coordinate input from manufacturers on existing schema for replacement parts, operations and maintenance manuals, troubleshooting guides, safety data sheets and other information defined in the COBie project. Additional projects to cover other cross-product domains such as sustainability are also likely to be facilitated through the SPie projects.

leadership

The advantage of working on such a project through the buildingSMART alliance is that the open standards developed through buildingSMART projects are being directly included in contracts by the largest federal construction agents in the U.S. including the Army, Corps of Engineers, NASA, and U.S. Department of State. The buildingSMART alliance allows you to directly work with representatives of these owners to ensure that business processes and software systems are streamlined to support the open standards we create together.

ownership

Manufacturers maintain full control over their data. Groups of manufacturers (preferably in the context of their related associations) will work with buildingSMART alliance to define the content of the schema. The buildingSMART alliance will define the format for the schema. The National Institute of Building Sciences will publish these schemas through the Whole Building Design Guide's Product Guide resource (link) free of charge. In addition, NIBS will work with participating firms to establish a discovery engine that will streamline discovery and purchase of your products.

the product guide

The current product templates are a work in progress. We need your help to ensure we have it right!   You can look at the templates using the productguide™.   

status

The SPie team completed its first public demonstration at the 2009 National Institute of Building (NIBS) Sciences Annual Meeting. Please see the SPie Dec 2009 Meeting Notes Page for more information from this meeting.

To follow-up on the success of that meeting trade and professional associations, and product manufacturers are invited to participate in the development of standard product templates for each of the tens of thousands of products that go into our built environment. NIBS is hosting a workshop in Washington, DC on 10-11 March 2010 to discuss this project with manufactures and trade and manufacturing associations. Current agenda for the meeting is expected to include:

workshop day 1

The first day of the workshop will explain the SPie project and demonstrate the current ability to use SPie data through the project life-cycle to streamline specification, product discovery, sales, submittals, and product usability. The topics are expected to include:

• the role of standards and classifications
• SPie product template process
• demonstration of the Product Guide
• demonstration of SPie product information during design and specification
• use of SPie product information during construction submittals
• delivery of SPie product information to the facility owner

Since product manufacturers are also interested in providing service to those who purchase their products formats, the currently federal specified open information exchange schemas for the delivery of the following information using the Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) format will be presented:

• replacement parts
• operations, maintenance, and troubleshooting instructions
• warranty information

workshop day 2

approaches to specified products contained in design assemblies approaches to products identified as accessories in specifications concurrent product domain workshops (based upon attendees) Domain Workshops identification of top five products in a domain presentation of current schema production of draft schema demonstration of data capture spreadsheet updating Product Guide with draft schema and examples

Concurrent Workshops

• parts list exchange requirements
• maintenance manual exchange requirements
• warranty exchange requirements
• concurrent workshop on sustainability exchange requirements

Wrap-Up Activities

• member outreach and voting requirements
• report of workshop participants

 

Status

10-11 March 2010 Workshop Planned for nation-wide trade association workshop.