ITcon Vol. 21, pg. 337-353, http://www.itcon.org/2016/22

The design brief: requirements and compliance

submitted:March 2016
revised:September 2016
published:November 2016
editor(s):Dimyadi J, Solihin W
authors:David Marchant, Senior Research Fellow,
UNSW Australia, Sydney, Australia;
d.marchant@unsw.edu.au
summary:The activities of briefing (stating problems to be solved) and designing (instantiating solutions) are intimately interlinked – both parts of the same process to develop and procure a product which satisfies one or more needs. There is an on-going “conversation” between problem (requirement) definition and design proposal in which acceptable proposals progressively add to, and refine, the definition of the whole solution while at the same time potentially generating further problems to be resolved. At any point in time through this process, the developed whole solution is composed of partial solutions which form the context against which further problem statements are made. These problem statements are indicators for a future desired state of the whole solution. The design briefing process also can be seen as starting before professional designers are involved and continues after they complete their project contribution, so retaining design intentions alongside solutions is valuable for the on- going use of a designed product. With these ideas as background, this paper investigates the hypothesis that data for briefing and design can be usefully correlated within integrated building information data models. Several extensions are proposed to the IFC data schema that formalise the way requirements can be modelled. It is then shown how rule-based checking of solutions can be implemented against requirements defined in this way.
keywords:Briefing, Building Information Modelling (BIM), IFC, compliance checking
full text: (PDF file, 0.68 MB)
citation:Marchant D (2016). The design brief: requirements and compliance, ITcon Vol. 21, Special issue CIB W78 2015 Special track on Compliance Checking, pg. 337-353, https://www.itcon.org/2016/22