OGC and buildingSMART alliance announce joint call for sponsors for AECOO Testbed

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and buildingSMART alliance TM have issued a call for sponsors from the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner, Operator (AECOO) community for a testbed to advance progress on communications interoperability for Building Information Models (BIM) over the building and capital facility life cycle. Sponsors define interoperability requirements to advance testbed objectives including the development of use cases, technology objectives, and schedule.

Sponsors contribute resources - funding, personnel, and facilities. Testbed roles are defined in OGC's and buildingSMART alliance's presentation to attendees at the Fall 2007 AEC-ST Conference about the AECOO Testbed that is available at: http://nbims.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=1276.

In the OGC's OWS-4 initiative, conducted in 2006, participants advanced specifications relating to CAD/GIS/BIM integration. During this testbed, it was demonstrated that commercial BIM software and other web service based commercial products containing OGC standards could produce interoperable software solutions. A number of organizations involved in OWS-4 agreed that the scope and urgency of standards related to BIM as applied to the building lifecycle warranted a separate new initiative.

Founded in 1994, the OGC has developed a unique and proven testbed-driven consensus process for rapid development of interoperability standards in the geospatial information technology domain. OGC signed memoranda of understanding with the National Institute of Building Sciences in 2005 and with the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) in 2006. In 2007, OGC became a member of the buildingSMART alliance. OGC works with all three organizations to strengthen open standards-based systems interoperability used by the capital facilities infrastructure community and the broader geospatial, architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) and information technology (IT) communities. The AECOO Testbed will build on these relationships as well as OGC's relationship with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and other AECOO community and private organizations. The AECOO Testbed will address both spatial and non-spatial concerns.

Work is now underway to define the nature and scope of the Testbed. Organizations having interest in sponsoring are invited to contact the OGC and the buildingSMART alliance at aec-techdesk@opengeospatial.org. Deadline for contact is January 31, 2008.

Source: www.opengeospatial.org