Industry Foundation Class Modeling for Estimating and Scheduling

Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs) developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) are general models of a building project that support project information sharing and exchange among different types of computer applications used in the project. The IFCs are developed based on the information requirements from industry processes. The Project Management Domain Committee of IAI’s North America Chapter has developed process models of cost estimating, scheduling, and their integration for the purpose of generating the IFCs to support data sharing throughout estimating and scheduling applications. The goal of this paper is to present the models relevant to estimating and scheduling in the IFCs. The paper discusses various modelling issues covering subjects such as costs, construction processes, resources, products, and project documents for work plans and cost estimates