Querying IFC-Based Building Information Models to Support Construction Management Functions

Abstract

The design and construction community has shown increasing interest in adopting Building Information Models (BIM). While the richness of design information offered by BIM is evident, there are still tremendous challenges in getting construction-specific information out of BIM, particularly from IFC-based product models. This paper describes our approach for querying construction-specific design conditions from an IFC-based model. The approach involves: (1) the formalization of construction-specific design conditions as an ontology of product features, (2) the automated generation of feature-based product models for a particular construction domain and function, and (3) a formal specification that supports user-driven queries of the feature-based model. This approach allows practitioners to answer a broad range of user-customizable queries in support of different construction management functions. It also transforms designer-focused EFC-based models into construction-focused, feature-based models.