BIM without the bottleneck: an IFC overlay inside the twin

A BIM Manager's job includes a task that sounds simple and rarely is: confirming that what got built on site matches what the design model said should be built. Traditionally that means opening two different pieces of software, a BIM viewer and whatever visual record exists of the actual site, and mentally overlaying one on the other.

One view, not two

We take an IFC first approach to BIM, meaning the industry standard open format for building information, rather than requiring a specific proprietary viewer. That model overlays directly against the photoreal, as built twin captured from site, in the same 3D view. A BIM Manager can compare design intent to physical reality directly, rather than reconciling two disconnected systems by eye.

That same overlay supports clash detection, spotting where an as built condition genuinely conflicts with the design model, and as built comparison more broadly, useful well beyond the handover point when a facilities team inherits the building and needs to know where reality quietly diverged from the drawings.

Where this sits inside ISO 19650

ISO 19650 sets out an information management approach for the whole project lifecycle, not just design. An as built twin, tied to the same coordinate system as the design model and updated through construction, is a natural fit for that approach, because it gives a project a genuinely current source of truth rather than a design model that quietly falls out of date the moment site conditions deviate from it.

The wider case for construction, covering CDM 2015, the Building Safety Act and the other four project roles, is covered earlier in this series. Read it here if you missed it, or see our Construction vertical page directly.