The main goal of the IFC-for-Tunneling Deployment programme is to refine, validate and implement the IFC for Tunneling Draft Standard (issued August 2022) so to make it a bSI Candidate Standard before it is submitted into the ISO publication process.
The programme is primarily targeted at providers of:
- professional design or construction management software,
- collaborative BIM platforms,
- BIM Viewers/Checkers,
- customed solutions,
- SDK packages,
- machine guidance solutions,
- assets management solutions, and/or
- integration services,
that are addressing the needs of the underground infrastructures industry.
The IFC for Tunneling Draft Standard was developed during 2020-2022 by bSI's IFC-for-Tunnelling Team (made of more than 55+ geotechnicians, excavation experts, systems operators from all over the world) and expands upon the IFC4.3 standard (released August 2021). It covers the following disciplines:
- geotechnical situations and their uncertainties,
- mechanized and traditional excavation processes, lining technics, support and reinforcement measures,
- systems incl. ventilation, lightning, drainage & dewatering, safety & evacuation, HV/LV.
As part of this Deployment programme we have prepared a set of activities, tools and IFC expertise so to provide you with the solid technical support you need to efficiently implement bSI's IFC-for-Tunnelling (IFC for Tunneling) concepts, including:
- guidance to best understand the IFC for Tunneling HTML documentation (objects/properties), and the IFC for Tunneling Express schema extensions,
- royalty-free domain-specific datasets for testing purposes,
- unit tests (concepts usages, aka how to exploit the concepts) through a 3-level approach:
- Level 1 : concept 'project' usages (all IfcProject usages),
- Level 2 : concept 'sub-project' usages (types, spatial-or-linear structures, groupings),
- Level 3 : concept 'entity' usages (geometry, material, classification, ownerships),
- shared GitHub platform with quality/consistency checking, and
- examples of code and IFC for Tunneling files.
Timing-wise, the IFC-for-Tunnelling (IFC for Tunneling) Deployment programme is organized to last from January till June 2023. The work is divided into sprints, with each sprint roughly lasting 4 weeks (start – implement/submit – QA/check – fix – deliver) - an overall plan is found here.
During these sprints, we offer 2 support sessions per week (to best accomodate timezones), to pick up from as need be:
- every Thursday 8am CET and
- every Thursday 6pm CET.
We intend to report upon the progress of the programme through the bSI website/blog as well as through the International Tunnelling Association (ITA) and its national branches.
The participation is free-of-charge, but we expect a minimum commitment in terms of resources so to properly endorse the programme.