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INTEROPERABILITY
OF HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE This paper summarizes the activities of the National Alliance on Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age on the issue of interoperability standards for hardware and software being used by state and local governments in the oversight of the design and construction of buildings. It offers recommendations to the National Alliance and its partners for future action to bring about interoperability of hardware and software to assist in the streamlining the building regulatory processes. Background When the National Alliance on Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age adopted their work plan in the summer of 2001, one of the objectives of the Alliance was to support the development and use of interoperability within the hardware and software that building departments at the state and local levels of government purchase and use in their oversight of the design and construction of buildings. One of the work products of the Alliance’s Technology Task Force was to research the feasibility of including within model procurement guidelines for jurisdictions to adopt and use in their purchasing of such hardware and software a requirement that all such information technology must be interoperable. Initial input to the Alliance from IAI and segments of the software community indicated that portions of this industry indeed were ready for this step. Working on those procurement guidelines for the Alliance, NCSBCS has held discussions with partners at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, the International Alliance for Interoperability, the National Institute of Building Sciences, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to research and discuss the current status of the hardware and software industry to be interoperable. Outcome of Technology Task Force Review of Interoperability Interoperability was the major topic of discussion at the May 28, 2003, meeting of the Alliance’s Technology Task Force hosted by the National Institute of Building Sciences. The outcome of that discussion and input received by NCSBCS was that the hardware and software industry are not yet at the state where interoperability can be mandated by state and local governments in their procurements, but that steps can be taken to phase in such requirements in the near future if the National Alliance and its partners develop funding resources to move forward such an initiative (see minutes). Specifically the task force agreed that: 1. There are two definitions of interoperability; one is easier to achieve than the other.
This second form of interoperability would mean that such software could operate on a diffuse network of servers with key based access to different people in the building design, construction and operation process based upon their role. Those individuals (especially in a disaster situation) then could work across a distributed network of servers which makes the data less vulnerable to an attack or being shut down during a disaster. 2. The task force agreed that at present, aside from the IAI initiatives with graphic design equipment, there are no existing interoperability standards for hardware and software being used in the building regulatory process but to move towards making that possible, the Alliance should undertake several steps.3. The recommended next steps for the Alliance are:
1) The Alliance request software vendors to provide the task force with a description of their input data requirements for their software. Specifically, have the vendors tell the Alliance what are their data requirements for their critical data. 2) Based upon receipt of the above information from a number of vendors, the task force then could compile that input into a document to be circulated to all vendors to ask them if the data requirements in that document were common to the data in their software packages.3) The above would then define for the Alliance a common format for software used in online permitting and other processes from which IFCs and a basic interoperability requirement then could be derived and included in an updated set of procurement guidelines issued by the National Alliance and used by state and local governments. Looking Ahead Based upon the work completed thus far by the National Alliance and its members, it appears that with some work within a year it will be possible to develop and issue interoperability requirements for online permitting processes. A slightly longer term project, depending upon progress being made in coming months by IAI and the International Code Council, NFPA, and others, is the development of interoperability standards for simple plans checking tools, such as checking for compliance with emergency egress, energy conservation for small commercial buildings and for residential structures. This work would be based on the exchange of the electronic equivalent of plans and specifications. Going beyond that to more detailed and complete plans checking for complex commercial and other types of occupancies (like that being developed in Singapore) will take several years. This work would be based on the exchange of building information models (from which traditional plans and specifications could be extracted as views). The process could be speeded up perhaps by holding several conferences and workshops and studying the Singapore electronic plans review software. Recommendation to the Alliance and Its Partners Interoperability, both the first and more complex second type, are important elements for the Alliance’s fulfillment of its mission of streamlining the nation’s building regulatory process to enhance public safety, economic competitiveness, and enabling our construction industry to "build, faster, better, safer and at less cost." The Alliance should seek out appropriate funding resources to undertake the next steps laid out in this paper and move as quickly as possible to work with the construction industry, the information technology community to achieve this objective.
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