9. COBie: A Specification for the Construction Operations Building Information Exchange

The Construction Operations Building information exchange (COBie) is a specification that evolved from the idea of Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM). The specification describes processes and information requirements which streamline the handover of specific data from the design and construction phases to the facility’s operation and maintenance (FM). Until now, the handover comprises a bulk of paper or e-paper documents, but extracting FM relevant information from these documents is considered to be tedious work. Therefore, the key idea of COBie is to incrementally gather and systematically store relevant information in a digital form as soon as they emerge in the project. To realize an effective data exchange and to guarantee market neutrality, the COBie specification suggests open formats, such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), SpreadsheetML or the IFC STEP format. These formats are meant for system-to-system data exchange. However, the implementation status of COBie is still at early stages. In practice, the creation of COBie deliverables is seen as problematic, due to wrong understanding of end users as well as insufficient software implementation. This ultimately lowers the acceptance among practitioners. Nevertheless, the potential benefit for the employer can be significant, if further technical and practical improvements are achieved.