Airport Entities - Call for Sponsorship

Airports are complex and varied. They consist of a wide variety of assets such as buildings, terrain, utilities, installations, infrastructure, roads and much more. They also include a range of  networks such as electrical and water, and critical domains such as security and fire safety, which all have different information needs throughout the different phases of an airports’ lifecycle. This complexity requires airports to be agile, innovative, and aligned to ensure CAPEX and OPEX are maximized and optimized.

Airports around the world are managed and governed by many different organizations, from authorities to private enterprises. They are also governed by strict regulations and must comply with international and national jurisdictions. Because of their similarity and remit to move passengers around the world, airports share technical standardization needs related to their capital development and in operation and maintenance phases.

There is a need for airports to have clearer knowledge and understanding of critical systems and assets and better control of data and information to be able to make better decisions. Related to IFC and buildingSMART, airports do not always know what entities, types, properties, and quantities to choose while working with critical airport object classes (or systems). Therefore, the creation of clear agreements within the airport community will allow for airports to work with only the necessary parts of the IFC schema, which will maximize the value throughout the whole lifecycle of assets and reduce redundancies and inconsistencies.

Why?

Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is a standard data model developed to support the exchange of information during all stages of the lifecycle of various objects/assets/systems and can be an important factor for optimizing asset management at airports. By using open standards such as IFC at airports, we can establish clear protocols and we can help to make applications more functional and interoperable.
This project offers an international opportunity to standardize how airports refer to building components and infrastructure assets during planning, designing, building, and operating airports. The standardized references of typical elements can in turn substantially help to:

• Reduce errors in and the cost of information exchange during capital project development, as well as the cost of data ownership during operations.
• Streamline data management and save time in data processing for airport owners and operators.
• Enable better internal decision-making through improved insights.
• Lower the barrier of entry and lead to larger and more diverse solutions.
• Effectively share industry lessons and expertise at an international level.

How?

The main objective of the project is to get new airport-specific object type definitions and create clear agreements within the airport domain for existing IFC versions.

• Communication:
  • Create clear value propositions for the entire airport community, so that other airports and organizations will join the discussion and collaboration.
  • Communicate with other Rooms (e.g. Railway Room, Infrastructure Room, and the Ports and Waterways Working-Group) and identify possible overlaps.
•  Requirements:
  • Make an inventory of airport specific object types and determine what attributes are needed.
• Conceptual model:
  • Create clear agreements within the airport domain on which entities, types, properties, and quantities to use from the IFC schema for the specific objects.

If you can support us, please complete the ‘Agreement to Participate’ document. The document also lets you indicate if you wish to contribute as part of the Project team if financial sponsorship is not possible. Please send the completed agreement to contact@buildingsmart.org.