IFC for Site, Landscape, and Urban Planning - Call for Participation

For all those interested in expanding the IFC schema and openBIM workflows to include more information about site, landscape, and urban design, please join me in this new project!

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Thank you to everyone who participated on the calls today. So far, we have 58 responses to participate. That is great news! There is a lot of work to be done and we need as much input as we can get from all our peers around the world. Feel free to share and encourage others to join in, even if it is just for a few session to help add input to the IDMs.

As requested here are the links to the presentation (PDF), the recording of the call (MP4), and the original Activity Proposal (PDF).

If you have any further questions, please feel free to address them here.

I will be following up with some participants who have expressed interest in Project Sponsorship. If any others have, or know of, potential candidates to sponsor, please let me know via a forum email/message.

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Hi Jeffrey. Any news on the ifc for Landscape issue? Looking forward joining the project! Florian from Zurich

Hi Florian,

Right now I am in the process of getting sponsorship funding lined up. I have to put together some formal documentation, but I should announce a Call for Sponsors soon. I’ll first be contacting and meeting with those that indicated interest in sponsoring at the Call for Participation.

Thanks for your continued interest!
Jeffrey

Hi Jeffrey. Any news about IFC for Site, Landscape and Urban Planning? Florian

No progress, at the moment. I’m getting more info on sponsorship criteria and resulting templates (agreements, MOUs, etc.). Planning on a discussion in Düsseldorf.

In addition to Sponsorship, we’re simultaneously working on Software Vendor Engagement, which is the third important leg of a project. So, the timetable may be compressed, or scope simplified, but in the end, this should be the first project to utilize new standard processes developed by bSI for projects.

Hi Jeffrey
We just come from the harmonization workshop of ifc Infra in munich. It was great to have the opportunity to see the progress of the other rooms.
We realized a lot of the work done by the other rooms overlap with our needs, but of course dont cover them fully.
We were shocked, that we are so far behind the current prozess. We are convinced we have to push our process to keep in touch with ifc Infra.
Did You get forward with sponsorship? Can we can support You finding sponsors? As part of the swiss landscape archtics assouciation (BSLA) we maybe can open some doors.
We realized there are some efforts of diffrent national and local goups wich are not coordinated. Would it be possible to have another online meeting on this forum like You organized it last November?
Greetings from Switzerland, Florian

I have a project called IfcXtreme which will accelerate IFC development all around the world and will speed up automation and control aspects

What about sponsorship from Switzerland and other leading countries in OpenBIM area like Finland, Norway, Germany, Sweden, …?

Kind regards,
Ehsan

Hi Florian @fglowatz,

Yes, I heard a little bit about the workshop. Sounds promising, but obviously also points out the need to get the IFC4Site, Landscape, &Urban Planning project funded and moving forward.

Any help in finding sponsors is appreciated. Some criteria to consider:

  1. A Sponsor must also be a buildingSMART International member. While funding a project at need is much valued and appreciated, continued membership to further support ongoing operational functions is also key, especially as people expect to gain for themselves from the creation, deployment, and implementation of the standards.

  2. With a projected overall budget of approximately €220.000,00 (two hundred twenty thousand Euros), we are looking for no more than 9 sponsors at €20k+ each. Could be as few as one or as many as 9. A broad coalition of end users (but not Software Vendors) is necessary, including government agencies, landscape architects, site engineers, landscape contractors, and others identified in the Project Proposal.

  3. Outside of overall project Sponsorship, there are opportunities to donate time and facilities as “in-kind” donations, especially for workshops. Needs to be coordinated.

I will send you a separate email about coordinating efforts. Thank you.

Hi Jeffrey

Thank You for the information.

The €20k-50k is a single amount or over several years?

Florian

Hi Forian,

I believe the sponsorship funding can be spread out over the course of the project, if needed per cashflow and fiscal planning requirements, as long as the sponsor agrees with bSI (in contract language) to provide the full amount pledged.

In this case we’re talking about 20-24 months. The more movement we have on this sooner, the better. I need to adjust the schedule accordingly. It looks like “IFC5”, containing all the current IFC extension projects (Bridge, Road, Rail, Common Schema, etc.), will be submitted to ISO in 2021. The core IFC schema work should be done by then, with MVD work continuing into 2022, if needed. I have room in my schedule to dedicate more time to managing this project, so we can compress the schedule a bit to accommodate general IFC development goals (including coordination with the Common Schema project and others).

So the earlier we get commitments (signed pledges with bSI), the earlier we can get started.

Hi! Everyone! I feel like this forum doesn’t reach all the people that are on the IFC Landscape e-mail list. While participating the workshop in Munich this June, me, Florian Glowatz Frei, Lukas Schmid and Marc Vögele talked about activating the IFC Landscape group. I was thinking, maybe we could form a Trello site, where it is possible to organize basic information and discussions under different topics, and assign tasks. We could form a face gallery of the group (where it’s not for every one to see), where we also throw in possible sponsors and work hours that each one is willing to commit to this project. Here in Finland, in Ramboll, we have already been talking about applying funding and we have a strong belief that we could get some stake holder committed to this project. I also might have few hours there and there this autumn to do some preparations like the Trello site and the face gallery.

Ideally, it would be nice to have a “Site/Landscape/Urban Planning Room” or group(s) within the Infrastructure Room. Or maybe its a “Site/GIS” Room with “Landscape”, “Urban Planning”, “GIS”, “Site”, and “Smart City” groups within it. If there is enough interest, a formal sponsor or two to back it up, and a dedicated room admin person, we can approach the bSI leadership with establishing such a room or group within another room and then set up communication resources around it.

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Good idea to have a Smart City Group/Room.
It’s a little bit hard to encourage people who work in Smart Cities field, because mainly have focused on CityGML, but someday both sides have to join their efforts results to each other.

I will speak with some friends to bake it up

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As part of Statsbygg`s requirements for BIM, Statsbygg is working to standardize IFC objects for Landscape Architecture. “IfcVegetation” is one of those IFC objects that Landscape Architects wants to have standardized. Since IFC2x3 and IFC4 do not have this object, a proposal has been made to use “IfcBuildingElementProxy” and Predefined type “USERDEFINED” as shown in the attached overview. Properties of “IfcVegetation” are taken from previous standardization work in BIMforLandskap.no, UK Landscape Institute PDT Flora and other requests for properties according to nursery data, plant description, etc. This is preliminary work that will continue in 2020. Feedback and input can be sent to aage.langedrag@multiconsult.no or steen.sunesen@statsbygg.no
[IfcVegetation_IFC2x3_Temporary_Solution_Entity_PredefinedType_Properties]
(https://revitlandscape.blogspot.com/2019/12/ifcvegetationifc2x3temporarysolutionent.html)

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Hi Jeffrey, Vilma, Aage and all the Landscape-BIM folks out there!

Is there any chance to meet at the Summit in Oslo? We are planning to participate and would be happy to talk about the ifc Site, Landscape and Urban planning!

Looking forward to meet You, Florian

Yes, It would be good to get together, even if informally. I’ll let everyone know if there will be a presentation/update on the status of the proposed project.

Great. See You in Oslo. Florian

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