COBie Exam – What, Where and How?
Have you ever considered COBie accreditation? If you did you must have been left in limbo. What is it, where is it and how can you take the exam? These are simple questions that should have a straightforward answer, yet buildingSMART managed to make them overly complex (at least for the COBie Foundation).
Let’s start with what. COBie Foundation exam is a simple test designed to establish that the student (a person taking the exam) has basic knowledge of COBie. This test is supposed to be 30 minutes long and cost around 100 EUR. COBie Certified Professional exam is difficult and should test your COBie knowledge to the limit. The exam is 2 hours long, has 160 questions and costs 750 EUR (500 EUR for bSI members) – very expensive…
Let’s move on to where. If you go onto buildingSMART – The International Home of BIM webpage, unfortunately, you will not find any details about COBie exams. You should follow this page instead: Apply for The COBie Certified Professional™ Exam (buildingsmart.org).
There is a tiny issue though… There is plenty of information in regards to COBie Certified Professional certification, yet not much about COBie Foundation. In fact, I could not find a link to register for the COBie Foundation exam.
And… there is a reason for that leading us to the last question of how. Firstly, the Foundation level exam is provided by national chapters (buildingSMART US, UK BIM Alliance etc.). These chapters must establish training curriculums and exams to reflect national implementations of COBie (yet, to my knowledge there is only one UK-specific COBie, everyone else is just following COBie 2.4 as it is defined in NBIMs v3 Chapter 4.2, thus this split into chapters seems irrelevant). Secondly, you cannot take an exam without taking the training provided by the COBie certified training providers. However, most of the chapters do not have training provider certification routes, thus it will not be possible to undertake the exam, leading to slower uptake of COBie around the world. If it all sounds a bit complex, here’s a visual which might be helpful:
On the bright side, you can undertake the ‘Intro to COBie’ course by ‘COBie Academy’ and take the exam supplied by the buildingSMART US Chapter. Although it is possible, it is not well described anywhere.
In Germany, you can find one training provider ‘Hochschule’ who provides COBie Foundation in German language. Here is their webpage: Digital Construction – Grundlagen BIM und COBie | Hochschule Luzern (hslu.ch)
In the UK there are rumours that M&M, Nottingham Uni and ‘rhmdv’ are on the path of providing UK qualification although it is not clear how, since the UK’s buildingSMART chapter the UK BIM Alliance have not provided any guidance yet. Obviously, you can undertake UK-aligned COBie Foundation training through yBIM – yBIM Training – Training. Note: there are other companies providing COBie training, but I don’t think the curriculum has been aligned to buildingSMART guidelines.
For COBie Certified Professional training I think there is just one training provider – ‘COBie Academy’ (Professional and Workforce Development – University of Florida (ufl.edu))
OK, coming back to the process of registration and exams, here is a short diagram showing the routes of both certifications.
Since I am doing the comparison of the two exams, here’s a short table outlining key facts:
I think there is a missed opportunity by buildingSMART International. There are quite a few professionals who would go for the Foundation exam to show their capability, but they don’t necessarily need to undertake the training as they already possess a good level of COBie knowledge. So for those students who already have a good understanding of COBie, paying for the course just to do the exam simply does not work.
By not allowing a simple registration, as it is done with the COBie Certified Professional exam, the community is missing out on the examination popularity and wider uptake of the COBie schema itself.
I hope this article helps you navigate through COBie examination routes.