Is IFC the format of the future?

A while ago, I asked my team for blog post ideas and my supervisor floated this topic as having potential for sparking some interesting discussion. After giving it some thought, it’s clear to me that if we’re going to truly transform the industry, IFC has to be the format of the future.

Background

There is currently a pooled fund study underway in the US regarding BIM for Bridges. This concept, often referred to as BrIM for Bridge Information Model, is focused on data modeling standards for electronic information sharing related to design, construction, operations, and maintenance of bridges. This working group recommends Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) as the recommended format for this proposed standardized data exchange. The question at hand is in regards to whether this current standardization effort will truly revolutionize the industry.

Obligatory XKCD Reference

Industry veterans have seen similar discussions play out in the past with data formats such as DXF for graphical CAD data and a hodge-podge of standard formats for ASCII text files utilized for sharing survey topography data.

Another example I remember from around the turn of the century is the discussion of DWF vs PDF. DWF is a proprietary format developed by Autodesk for viewing, printing, and annotating 2D and 3D content. While in many ways potentially technically superior than PDF (particularly, at the time, in file size), DWF failed to topple the momentum that PDF had already gained as the de-facto digital equivalent of the printed roll of plans. In fact, by the early 2010’s, electronic-only was the default and my colleagues and I began utilizing DTF (dead tree format) to specify that a printed, physical copy was required.

Given the multi-year effort required to research, implement, train, and require a particular file format, it’s understandable that infrastructure asset owners may be hesitant to jump on the bandwagon of IFC as ‘yet another’ file format.

IFC is a Good Bet

The BIM For Bridges effort here in the states mimics standards being adopted worldwide. BIM requirements are already a present-day fact of life for AEC practitioners in markets including the UK, Europe, Middle East, and Asia. In almost every case, IFC is preferred as the common data standard. IFC is an ideal format for AEC data because:

• it is an open format published as an ISO standard (ISO 16739-1:2018)
• it is mature, having published version 1.0 in 1996
• it is developed in the open, by consensus, and overseen by a non-profit organization
• there is a thriving ecosystem of open-source tools and programs that can read and write the format
• it is wide-ranging, including data models for:
  • personal contact information
  • company organizational structure
  • quantity takeoffs and material details
  • critical path scheduling of tasks

The Argument Against

One of the most common rebuttals of an open, neutral format is that each software vendor will end up implementing the standard in slightly different ways, which only serves to further fragment the industry. Also, proponents of proprietary binary formats often make claims of specific “magic” features that their software tool of choice provides and allegedly can’t be replicated in a different format. However, data lock-in to closed, proprietary formats is not in anyone’s best interests, excepting of course the software vendors.

IFC is a Schema, Not a File Format

Up to this point, we’ve been thinking primarily in terms of a single container manifesting itself as a *.ifc file stored on e.g. a hard drive. However, this is short-sighted, because IFC is a schema, not a file format. As we move to data streaming continuously from physical IoT sensors back to a Digital Twin, the BrIM data will be dynamic. For this reason, among others, BrIM will take on a service-oriented architecture with versioning and time stamping. Data will most likely live in a cloud environment in a data lake or similar distributed storage system, with multiple clients connecting simultaneously at any given time. Indeed, there currently are multiple common data formats for IFC data, including XML and JSON in addition to the typical STEP file. This points to a great staying power for IFC. And indeed, this object-oriented, schema-based focus is reflected in the name - Industry Foundation Classes.

Conclusion

It seems like there is more and more momentum around IFC with each passing month. As we kick off a new year and a new decade, I’m definitely hitching my wagon to IFC - particularly for bridges and other linear civil works that have been slow to make the leap to an Information Model focus.