The project of the Building Information Foundation focuses on creating a digital tool that verifies architectural designs in terms of the adherence to building regulations.

What kind of problem is the project trying to solve?

At the moment, there is no publicly available template for architectural designs that accounts for basic information of apartment design. This often results in errors regarding building regulations in building designs, which is why they are returned from the building control to designers.

A common template for the design would speed up the design work in projects, facilitate working on data models and smoothen the collaboration between different actors in a project significantly.

Objective: Improved efficiency in apartment design

In the project, we will create an architectural design template for designing apartments in the ArchiCAD software that takes into account both the up-to-date requirements of working on information models and valid regulations and instructions on designing apartments.

The template produced as a result of the project ensures that the architectural designs meet the building control requirements already in the design phase. This can significantly reduce the need for revisions of the designs as the designs do not need to be sent back by the building control authorities due to technical shortcomings. Ideally, revisions can be omitted completely as the quality of the designs is improved. In addition to checklists, the template can be linked to information on instructions and regulations. This way, comprehensive, task-related guidance can be shown during the work.

What is done in this project?

This experimental project produces a study on the checklists and guidance needed in designing apartments. This information will be entered into a publicly available ArchiCAD template in a format that makes it usable for the designer. An ArchiCAD template will be created with one or two areas of the process realised as completely as possible as examples. The project also involves a study of the compatibility of the method with the Revit process.

What are the expected results of the experiment?

The project results in a public template for architectural designs that improves the efficiency of the design work and produces better functioning designs that help relieve the workload at the building control.

Who benefits?

The template benefits all parties that process architectural designs: Architects, building control authorities and owners of building projects. The architect has more time to concentrate on creative work when the adherence to building regulations can be checked automatically. This also means that the owner will receive a building that has been designed better. More complete designs reduce the workload of the building control authorities because the designs are faster to verify.