Is IDS the future of Quality Control for information delivery?

Is IDS the future of Quality Control for information delivery?

Well, AI is the future anyway, but until then, projects and clients need results, and they need them to be reliable and fast.

After finishing setting up the whole QC for a recent project and sorting out which information will be delivered in IFC format, I can summarize my take on IDS as follows:

Opinion:

1. The standard is without a doubt a huge step forward. It has a clear structure, everyone is able to use it, and best of all, it is open.

2. Writing an IDS needs quite a few intense hours in the focus zone, but as a data manager, you'd have to do it in some other form anyway, so at least you feel you're putting the work into something you can re-use.

3. About what the software houses are selling you these days... Let's just say that like me, you'll soon be asking why you just spent a few thousand dollars on beta products. I was glad to see so many companies going for it and adopting IDS, but IDS could enable us to do so much more and better, and especially the checking tools are just starting. For example, BIMcollab does let you write your own IDS, but you can't really use it in another checking software (like Solibri). Yes, it seams they're closing the open standard again, which is a shame.

Advice:

1. You'd be doing yourself a favor by using some tool to structure your IR. The only good ones I know are #plannerly and #bimq, but I'm sure there are others. Just don't go for institutional/academic stuff as their business model is usually having their own standards as the more relevant ones, and not really helping professionals deliver better projects.

2. You don't have to learn to write XML files, but at least open them in a reader to understand how they work and maybe debug some errors when the software starts declining the (open) IDS files written in another tool.

3. Plan your Quality Control as a part of your Quality Management strategy. If you just focus on QC, you end up getting lost in the details and spending your time running after small irrelevant errors (think LOIN).

4. Start using IDS, let yourself get frustrated with it, even if the state-of-the-art when it comes to tools still leaves a lot to be desired. Only that way you'll be able to ride that wave when it finally comes!