The definition of shared dictionaries able to facilitate communication in the construction sector has been an open issue long since. The advent of ICT highlighted the existing issues imposing new challenges to allow the communication between systems. Nowadays, the digital transformation in the construction sector is led by Building Information Modelling. Several efforts have been spent both in research and industry developing open standards like the industry foundation classes and related ontologies to empower interoperability. However, this paper highlights the obstacles limiting use and exchange of information at the state of the art