Joining the panel at bSUKI webinar to launch buildingSMART naming standard

BDNS is a simple standard that defines how equipment should be named in the design, delivery and in-use phases of a building. 

BDNS was originally developed for smart buildings as a way to ensure that physical assets on a building project were consistently named in the design information, the BMS (building management system) control system, and the asset management software.

BDNS for BIM (building information modelling) is being formally adopted by the international buildingSMART ISO standards, and the UK and Ireland bSUKI chapter hosted the webinar. The BDNS is aligned with the IFC standard (Industry Foundation Classes), and is vendor-neutral and available to everyone.  

The webinar was our chance to demonstrate how version 2.0.0 of the BDNS offers so much more for the user, including compatibility with IFC, which will greatly improve consistency and functionality of data mapping and 3D modelling software. We wanted to introduce people to the core principles of the new BDNS, its scope, real-world examples of the benefits, and how to start using the BDNS in their own organisations. 

Everyone on the webinar panel played a part in the development of the BDNS as contributing users. In fact, the source code is hosted on The Open Data Institute (theodi), co-founded by the creator of the internet, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. We're all in agreement that the free accessibility of the data is one of its greatest strengths, being developed and managed by the people who use it. 

My first contribution to the BDNS was in 2022, and I've been an active contributor ever since. I've always found the BDNS community to be active, supportive and willing to expand to meet new use-cases. 

At Max Fordham, we adopted the BDNS when a project specified it in a BIM Execution Plan. I'd already been working on a product specification and cataloguing system (digital schedules) to standardise how we named equipment across our projects, so adopting the BDNS was something we were very prepared for. 

Before digital schedules, creating schedules was a manual process that we found time-consuming and prone to inconsistencies and errors. Also, the data wasn't easy to search, and wasn't feeding into Revit or IFC models. Committing to a naming protocol has improved consistency across our projects and portfolios, and improved compatibility with commonly used design tools such as Revit and IFC. 

As sub-consultants on construction projects, information standards are often dictated to us by the project client team through a BEP (BIM execution plan). In an ideal world, we'd help to write the BEP, but that isn't always the case, and sometimes it asks for equipment naming procedures that diverge from the BDNS standard. 

I'm currently developing BDNS Plus, which is a way of configuring equipment references on projects. We're looking for collaborators to develop this, so it would be great to hear from anyone who's interested in being involved.