COBie 2.5? COBie 3? AOH-BSEM? What’s the future of COBie?
The boring part
The COBie saga began over 15 years ago with the first publication of COBie 1.0, which quickly progressed into COBie 2.26 and finally matured into what we know as COBie 2.4.
If you are delivering COBie on your projects it is most likely COBie 2.4 version, if not, you may want to double-check what you signed up for. If you want to learn a bit more about COBie’s history, you can visit History – buildingSMART COBie.
Now, COBie 2.4 is described in the NBIMs version 3 standard. At some point, we had a spin-off in the UK, which was somewhat described in BS1192-4 and named as COBie 2.4 – UK. Well, BS1192-4 is now superseded by ISO19650-4 and it has a clear reference back to NBIMs v3. We may talk more about it in a later article.
Just before we jump into the next section here’s a simple diagram to navigate your way around:
An interesting part
In 2020 there was a proposal for COBie 2.5, which seemed like a great idea at the time, but kind of died in the making (at least the name).
However, there is a live project under buildingSMART, which is the most promising to date. After multiple iterations to the project name, it is now called Asset Operations Handover – Building Systems Equipment Maintenance (AOH-BSEM) and it even has a nickname – ‘Son of COBie’.
Asset Operations Handover is a framework. It is an effective communication and development concept to simply describe the organization of solutions for many use cases across multiple domains, such as buildings, rail etc. The implementation of each solution will be accomplished using the emerging bSI tool sets (Use Case Management (UCM), Information Delivery Specification (IDS)).
To describe the ‘Son of COBie’ the project picks the core framework and delves into the building domain to describe the exchange requirements for equipment maintenance.
In short, the diagram below describes the AOH Framework Schematic:
To date, there are some technical reports published by bSI. For further information have a look at this post from Bill East. If you want to see the key differences between COBie and AOH-BSEM, look at Bill’s post here.
The above implementation will be a game-changer in the handover process, but it needs further funding. The project received a lot of interest, yet just a handful committed financially.
The shocking part
I’m not sure about you, but I totally missed something that is called COBie 3! According to the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), COBie 3 will replace COBie 2.4 and will be published in the upcoming NBIMs v4 in 2023.
According to Ian Howell, Interim CEO of bSI – ‘The COBie 3.0 specification defines U.S. industry requirements supported by the IFC schema that will also inform the new Asset Operations Handover project being proposed by bSI’.
If you want to see the draft changes please follow this link.
So, what’s the future of COBie?
Well, at some point we will get an update on the current COBie 2.4. However, having two projects (COBie 3 and AOH-BSEM) running in parallel does not give us any clarity. It seems that COBie 3 will most likely replace COBie 2.4 in the US, yet it’s unclear if the rest of the world will follow suit.
While the AOH-BSEM project seems to be well thought through and has some documented processes, it is yet to be completed. For now, COBie 2.4 is still the current version.