Framing and Evaluating the Best Practices of IFC-Based Automated Rule Checking: A Case Study

Abstract

This research reviews recent advances in the domain of Automated Rule Checking (ARC) and argues that current systems are predominantly designed to validate models in post-design stages, useful for applications such as e-permitting. However, such a design-check-separated paradigm imposes a burden on designers as they need to iteratively fix the fail-to-pass issues. Accordingly, the study reviews the best-practices of IFC-based ARC systems and proposes a framework for ARC system development, aiming to achieve proactive bottom-up solutions building upon the requirements and resources of end-users. To present and evaluate its capabilities, the framework is implemented in a real-life case study. The case study presents all the necessary steps that should be taken for the development of an ARC solution from rule selection and analysis, to implementation and feedback. It is explained how a rule checking problem can be broken down into separate modules implemented in an iterative approach. Results show that the proposed framework is feasible for successful implementation of ARC systems and highlight that a stable data standard and modeling guideline is needed to achieve proactive ARC solutions. The study also discusses that there are some critical limitations in using IFC which need to be addressed in future studies.