Practical and Research Issues in Using Industry Foundation Classes for Construction Cost Estimating

Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) have made substantial progress in recent years, and many design software companies now provide export capabilities of IFC-based product models. Consequently, product models are starting to become available from commercial design software programs used in the building construction industry. Yet, there has been limited testing of IFC-based product model representations to support the many processes and tasks required from construction professionals. In particular, IFC-based product models contain quantity information that could be used for cost estimating. In this research study, we assess the usefulness of IFC's to meet the practical needs of construction cost estimators.