Wayland, Mass., 17 February 2010 – The buildingSMART allianceTM (bSa) and the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC®) have released a new report, “Summary of the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner Operator Phase 1 (AECOO-1) Joint Testbed.” The report summarizes results of a nine-month effort to increase interoperability among software used by architects, construction companies, cost estimators and building energy analysts.

“The Board of Directors for one of the AECOO-1 sponsors, the American Institute of Architects, recently approved a statement supporting the use of open standards for Building Information Models,” said OGC Executive Director of Global Business Development Louis Hecht. “The AECOO-1 Testbed is an important first step toward achieving this goal, which is one that the OGC, bSa, our sponsors and many others in the industry also support.”

Jointly led by the bSa and the OGC, the AECOO-1 Testbed was conducted in the OGC Interoperability Program. All results were submitted to the bSa for consideration as candidate specifications and best practices under the National Building Information Model StandardTM (NBIMS) Rules of Governance.

AECOO-1 Testbed Sponsors include:

— Architecture Firms: HOK, Burt Hill and Ellerbe Becket

— General Contractors: Webcor and Gilbane

— Government Agencies: US General Services Administration and Statsbygg (Norway)

— Trade Associations: American Institute of Architects and Large Firm Roundtable

The report is available at: http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/index.php/newsevents/news/Entry/aecoo1jointtestbedreport. For more information, contact Louis Hecht (lhecht@opengeospatial.org) of the OGC and/or David Morris (david_morris@emcorgroup.com) of the bSa.

The buildingSMART allianceTM, a council of the National Institute of Building Sciences, develops the National Building Information Modeling (BIM) Standard to streamline the collection and use of construction data. The Institute is a liaison between the public and private sectors, working with government, building industry and manufacturing stakeholders to advance building science and technology. To learn more, visit www.buildingsmartalliance.org.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 385 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.

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