Certification details

This is the only official buildingSMART website to publish guidelines, open certification calls and ongoing programs, and results for buildingSMART software certification.

Quick links for new certification:

official IFC Certification 2.0 procedure IFC2x3 Coordination View 2.0 certification

Details of the IFC Certification Procedure

In 2010 buildingSMART developed the new IFC Certification 2.0 procedure to significantly improve quality assurance and service to participating software companies. It cancels and replaces the old IFC Certification 1.0 procedure that had been used 2001-2010.

The buildingSMART IFC Software Certification procedure is intended to promote consistent and reliable implementations of the IFC specification by many software vendors across multiple software applications. The consistency aimed at by the certification program will help drive rapid evaluation, deployment and acceptance of the IFC standard for the exchange and sharing of Building Information Models.

The IFC Software Certification procedure has been updated during 2009 and 2010, leading to the new IFC Certification 2.0 procedure. The previous certification, following the IFC2x certification procedure is no longer executed and the validity of the old certification logos will be withdrawn.

IFC Certification 2.0 procedure (current as of 2010) IFC2x Certification procedure (previous until 2009)

Each individual certification process is guided by the applicable certification procedure and applies to a particular subset of the IFC data schema. Also the applicable costs are governed by the size of the schema subset selected. The subset is determined by:

the release of the IFC data schema the model view definition, i.e. the subset of the IFC data schema, that corresponds to the exchange requirements selected for the certification. The model view definition needs to be accepted by and has to be under copyright of buildingSMART international in order to be applicable to buildingSMART certification.

Understand Certification

How does certification relate to quality and how is it assured? Which services does buildingSMART provide?

What does buildingSMART certification guarantee? Is there an overall picture?

Make an analogy to your car safety procedures → See quality of IFC interfaces tested in many ways →

Software developers do testing of their implementation buildingSMART does stringent certification user organizations do reviews as well

In-house quality assurance:

Car: during design and fabrication with simulations, pilots, prefabrication testing and tolerance monitoring IFC: unit-, pilot- and beta-testing during software development

Certification:

Car: done by authorities with recurring checks and by accredited independent organizations with crash-tests IFC: organized by buildingSMART International with the well developed Certification 2.0 procedure - the only official buildingSMART IFC certification

Validation:

Car: done by automobile associations, magazines, with own performance tests IFC: done by authorities and companies with own exchange requirements to validate compliance with specific needs