WAYLAND, Mass. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — May 5, 2009 — The OGC announced completion of the AECOO-1 (Architecture, Engineering, Construction, Owner and Operator) Phase 1 Testbed, a 9-month effort to increase interoperability among software used by architects, construction companies, cost estimators and building energy analysts. On Thursday, May 28, 2009, from 12:00 - 2:00 p.m. EDT, the buildingSMART alliance^TM (bSa), the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC^®) and sponsors and participants of the AECOO-1 Testbed will conduct a free webinar demonstrating results from the Testbed.

Effective management of buildings and other capital facilities increasingly requires information exchange among all disciplines and professions that have a stake in the design, construction and operation of those facilities. The AECOO-1 Testbed exchanged building information using Industry Foundation Class (IFC) standards to analyze tradeoffs between construction cost and energy efficiency. This work was preliminary to possible future development of open standards for Web service interfaces. Results will be submitted for consideration by bSa’s National Building Information Modeling Standard (NBIMS) Project Committee.

For more information and to register for the free webinar, go to: http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/initiatives/aecoo-1

AECOO-1 sponsors include: buildingSMART alliance, Associated General Contractors of America, American Institute of Architects, Burt Hill, Ellerbe Becket, Gilbane Development Corporation, HOK, Large Firm Round Table, NIST, Statsbygg (Norway), US General Services Administration, and Webcor Builders.

Participants in the demonstration include: Bentley Systems, Digital Alchemy, Faithful & Gould, Graphisoft, LBNL, PhiCubed/Sofi, Nemetscheck NA, NIST, and Tokmo Solutions.

The buildingSMART alliance^TM is a council of the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS). The alliance is the umbrella organization for two permanent projects: the National CAD Standard and the National Building Information Model Standard. The alliance was established to coordinate the profound constructive changes coming to the fragmented real property industry in North America. Its goal is open interoperability and full lifecycle implementation of building information models. Visit the buildingSMART alliance website at http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org.

The OGC^® is an international consortium of more than 380 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS^® standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.

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Contact:

Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.
Sam Bacharach, +1-703-352-3938
Executive Director, Outreach
Email Contact