GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY/ AEC community seeks common language

In September 1999, representatives from the building industry met with representatives from the architecture/engineering/ construction (AEC) software industry to launch the aecXML Initiative. The goal of the meeting was to develop programming language standards that would make it easier for industry professionals to share data across software platforms via the Internet.

Why should local governments be concerned with the exchange of information among the many disciplines in the construction industry? Simply put, all construction begins and ends with the local planning and development departments. Every major phase of a building project begins with a permit application and ends with an inspection. The aecXML Initiative will allow building officials to access information readily, and it will streamline and expedite the review process.

The aecXML Initiative was created by Exton, Pa.-based Bentley Systems in August 1999. The International Alliance for Inter-operability (IAI), based in Oakton, Va., assumed responsibility for the aecXML Initiative in September 1999 to ensure that its development would be a global, industry-wide activity. (The IAI establishes standards for exchanging information among all software applications serving the AEC community.)

Now widely accepted as the successor to hypertext markup language (HTML), extensible markup language (XML) is emerging as the primary programming language for electronic communications over the Internet. XML explains how to create electronic documents, how to define elements in the documents, and how computers should interpret the contents of documents.

When data is created in XML it is “tagged,” or identified, according to a classification system. With XML, an Internet search engine looking for zip codes, for example, could safely ignore all strings of numbers that do not have the proper tag identifying zip codes, vastly increasing the speed and accuracy of the search.

aecXML is a framework for using XML for electronic communications in the AEC community. The uniform tags developed through the aecXML Initiative will set the standards for the classification system as it applies to AEC data. Using that system, companies and local government agencies will be able to share construction project information and conduct e-commerce across software applications.

Currently, documents for construction projects are created in different software applications and stored in different formats, making them difficult to share online. As a result, it is likely that the same information is entered many times over the course of one project. aecXML will make it possible to enter project information once per project and re-use it whenever necessary.

The greatest benefits of a common programming language for the AEC industry could be realized in the process of reviewing construction plans, drawings and blueprints. Current technology allows contractors to submit drawings online to planning departments when applying for building permits. With the use of aecXML tags, those drawings become dynamic documents. For example, tags can identify the locations of doors, their dimensions, the number of people that can pass through them in an emergency and whether they are fire-rated.

aecXML provides the power to significantly enhance the partnership between government and the construction industry. By creating a strategy to exchange AEC information over the Internet, the aecXML Initiative represents significant cost savings potential for both the building professionals and the local government agencies that serve them. Information about the aecXML Initiative is available at www.aecxml.org.