ABSTRACT
In the last two decades, the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Facility Management (AEC-FM) community has allocated many research efforts in solving interoperability issues. As proved in practice, partial interoperability causes faults, delays, inadequate quality, low productivity and consequently additional expenses. Since artifacts are not uniquely specified (simple example: group of lines can have diverse meaning), further analysis and automation are disabled. Full interoperability defined as “Ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged” (IEEE 1990) can be achieved with focusing on (1) data sharing, (2) the ability to exchange usable information, and (3) platform independence, i.e. away from proprietary developments (Nour 2007).
