daratechPLANT 2008 Report
Everywhere you go and almost every presentation has some reference to interoperability, BIM and ISO 15926. I have covered each of these in previous posts. I think both Ric and Robin made very key points as it relates to technology and standards and their respective organizations efforts as it relates to ISO 15926. I think Robin did a good job of distinguishing between process and technology. In his presentation he outlined at a high level it is 80% process and 20% technology. One of the points he made was that a lot of us focus on the technology trying to solve the process versus solving the process and then applying the appropriate technology. To illustrate this I think Ric put it best when he said someone approached him at a meeting and said "that his boss had instructed him to go to this meeting and bring me back BIM!" I think there are a lot of people within the industry that do view BIM as a technology versus a process. I ask customers what their process is for implementing BIM and most will respond with respect to how they are designing their projects in 3D. Modeling in 3D is only a piece of the standard.
Let's talk about what really excited me about their presentations as it relates to ISO 15926. Ric explained the concept behind Wikinomics and how it sets up a collaborative environment that promotes contribution from multiple parties. So at a high level this could be compared to applications like YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, and Wikipedia. The big announcement from Ric was ISO 15926 WIP. This will setup a collaborative environment where multiple parties can directly contribute to the ISO 15926 effort. As Ric outlined in his presentation this will accelerate the process but also allow companies to start developing and using it now versus waiting several years for the approval. Robin announced that the site was operational and it can be found here: http://wip.15926.org
The site has been setup to accommodate three roles. They are as follows:
Read-only users: Everyone
Contributing users: WIP certified
WIP approvers: Domain and modeling experts
I think this is very exciting news and a good use of technology to provide a collaborative environment that will accelerate the development of ISO 15926.
People often ask me what our efforts are as it relates to BIM & ISO 15926 and will we develop technology to support these efforts. The answer is yes, but the big question is where and how do we fit in these respective standards. At the current time, I view our position will be as a facilitator of the documents and data associated with the standards much how pdf is used today. If you read the McGraw Hill report on Interoperability it shows that software incompatibility was the major factor impacting data sharing. If you take pdf at its core value, doesn't it speak volumes towards this? In a future post I will go into great detail about how and where I think Adobe fits into these standards.
I think the news above is exciting and challenge you to engage with these efforts. A perfect opportunity will be at the Fiatech Technology Conference held March 31st - April 2nd in New Orleans. Adobe will be participating and presenting at this conference.
Have fun,
Jonathan
Comments
Dear Jonathan,
Allow me to add some additional facts to your excellent article.
The ISO 15926 is a standard for interoperability. A definition of interoperability is: The ability of different types of computers, networks, operating systems, and applications to work together effectively, without prior communication, in order to exchange information in a useful and meaningful manner.
The scope is Process and Power facilities and engineering and construction projects for these, covering the entire chain of engineering, delivery, construction, operations and maintenance. The scope covers from alpha-numeric data to 2D and 3D model data, and data change which is the lifecycle aspect. However we think that albeit this scope is huge, the ISO 15926 can be used even in a much broader sense.
You can use the standard to integrate the systems in use on projects, within the companies or between the companies that are participating. It is predominantly a standard to couple different systems of participating companies through a neutral layer.
The heart of the standard is the Reference data Library. This is a database with classes that are used to type any kind of object in that scope, and the possible properties for these. So these classes and object models are also standardized. This online database can be extended by anybody who is certified to do so, hence called WIP (Working In Progress). It is also possible to set up your own classes that are related to the core classes in the central database in a child-to-parent relationship, and to use these specific classes only between the companies on your project.
In other words, the ISO 15926 allows you to use and extend a globally shared data model.
This means that efforts done by other companies are available to all, and the cost to use the standard in work hours is strongly reduced.
ISO 15926 also covers the implementation aspect of interoperability. The way to do data exchange is therefore standardized. Connected systems of the different companies participate in a federation of databases having the same standardized façade to the outside world, using enhanced and secured W3C Semantic Web technology, which is the emerging mainstream development on the World Wide Web.
Knowledge Base: http://15926.org
Onno Paap
Project manager FIATECH ADI
Author of ISO 15926 part 7
Jonathan Wrote: Hi Onno, great information. Thanks for the contribrution.
Posted by: Onno Paap | February 5, 2008 3:10 AM