TR161: Requirements Management Interface to Building Product Models

In current practice to design buildings requirements are recorded in a building program, which is used as the starting point of the design. Later in the design process, however, changes are often made based on the previous design solution. Without any decisions to change the scope, this can lead to a design solution that may not meet the original requirements. In addition, design is an iterative process and the design solutions often cause evolution in the requirements. However, the requirements documentation is usually not updated accordingly because a method to link requirements and design solutions does currently not exist.

My research is based on the observation that an active link between the client requirements and design tools can increase the use of requirements documentation throughout the process and facilitate updates of the requirements. The key limitation is the lack of a theory to link the requirements to the design systems.

I addressed this problem by formalizing a requirements model specification which can be linked to building-product-model-based design models. The specification is based on an extensive and inclusive analysis of client requirements. The specification covers 300 requirements in 14 main and 35 sub-categories. These requirements are organized into 7 main-level and 30 sub-level requirements objects.

The requirements model specification is based on three main concepts: (1) division of a project’s data set into requirements, design, production, and maintenance models, (2) requirements related to the different levels of details in building product models, and (3) direct and indirect requirements. Although the detailed requirements relate mainly to the architectural design, the main concepts of the specification are not domain-specific and apply to a general interface between objects in different models.

The main practical implications of my research are that it enables implementation of requirements management applications linked to building product models, and that the use of such applications can improve requirements management in the building process. I also propose some improvements in the current specifications for the IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) ­ a standard format for the representation of building product models.

The research also creates a basis for many future research topics to expand the requirements model specification and its use.