Software

Interoperability (IAI)

The International Alliance for Interoperability is a global standards-setting organization representing widely diverse constituencies—from architects and engineers, to research scientists, to commercial building owners and contractors, to government officials and academia, to facility managers, and to software companies and building product manufacturers. Members of the Building Technologies Department at Berkeley Lab's EETD have been working to bring software interoperability to the AEC/FM industry since 1994. EETD is a founding member of the IAI.

Alliance members are committed to promoting effective means of exchanging information among all software platforms and applications serving the AEC+FM community by adopting a single Building Information Model (BIM).

This mission is accomplished by defining, promoting and publishing specifications for Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) as BIM and as a basis for AEC project information sharing through the project life cycle, globally, across disciplines and technical applications. IFC BIM are published in the EXPRESS language for software development and in eXtensible Markup Language (ifcXML) for eCommerce and Internet purposes.