ABSTRACT
The construction industry is working very hard to bridge the gap between its islands of automation. One major problem facing building information models (BIMs) is the absence of the responsibility for modeling the construction product and material in a multidisciplinary cross industrial level of abstraction. The majority of manufacturers, product information brokers and portal websites are offering online ‘electronic paper’ versions of the old catalogues using convenient presentation formats such as PDF and HTML. Some Internet portal websites have developed their services to offer online product models. A major problem with BIMs is that they become of little use, when the information provided by the model is insufficient or obsolete e.g. or when a certain application requires a piece of information that can not be supplied by the model. Value Engineering activities and cost optimization necessitates carrying out different changes and substitutions of products and materials to the design to reach a satisfying decision.
