scope:

PURPOSE

The United States (U.S.) highway bridge community desires increased interoperability of digital design data. Specifically, the primary interest is in providing repeatable, reliable, and systematic exchange of design information for use in construction applications. An Information Delivery Manual (IDM) is a core element of building a solution for interoperability. An IDM defines the requirements to fulfill a specific digital information exchange.

This IDM is associated with a specific business use case that is part of the overarching lifecycle of the bridge or structure. The business use case is documented on a process map that identifies the exchange of information. The purpose of the IDM is to define and characterize the information that is required for that exchange to effectively execute the business use case. This IDM provides a human-readable set of information requirements for the exchange of model-based information to execute the construction of highway bridges in the U.S. There are subtasks that are supported, including preparing a bid package and initiating the fabrication phase.

The IDM could support the development of a range of technical solutions for computer-interoperable information exchange. The authors of this IDM intend for this document to support mapping the exchange requirement to Version 4.3 of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema to develop a Model View Definition (MVD) that can be implemented primarily in commercial off-the-shelf software. An MVD enables software developers to create a mechanism to send and receive bridge information using the open IFC schema, significantly improving the interoperability of bridge models.