Design, construct and operate as one production system.

A building passes through nine production stages in five groups, and only two of them sit on the jobsite. At each handoff the record is re-keyed by hand into the next firm’s system. The question written on site crossed a border between firms, and the answer has to come back the same way.

Software runs two loops joined by one release. Construction runs three: design, construct and operate, joined by two releases, issue for construction and handover. Each loop already iterates well inside its phase. What breaks is the interface between loops, where the record is re-keyed, and the path from operations back to design, which barely exists as data.

The same contract organises every step. Read the twelve steps, what crosses each gate and who holds it, on the standard page.

Mapped against the twelve steps, the standards community already ships most of the production system: IFC for open model data, IDS (Information Delivery Specification) for machine-checkable requirements, BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) for issue exchange, bSDD (buildingSMART Data Dictionary) and ETIM (the open product classification model) for classified products, COBie (Construction Operations Building information exchange) for handover. Three rows are missing or partial: a shared release gate, the specification-to-product crosswalk, and the operate-to-design loop.