Highlights of the Development Process of Industry Foundation Classes

The Industry Foundation Classes, IFC, are developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability, IAI, to provide for data exchange and sharing capabilities for the building and construction sector of the industry. Since the foundation of the IAI back in 1995 two releases of IFC had already been published and the third release is on its way. Many prototype implementations by leading software companies proved the IFC specifications and commercial products to satisfy the end user demands can be expected within the next quarters. The paper highlights the major development steps between the recognition of end user needs to improve business processes and the fulfilment of those needs by IFC specifications and implementations. Emphasis is put on the modelling of business processes, the provision of use cases, the integration of domain requirements within a single integrated but modular information model, and the underlying methodology and model architecture.