buildingSMART International is pleased to share important news with the openBIM community: ISO\/TC 59\/SC 13 has published the new Compatibility Policy for ISO 16739-1, the international standard for IFC.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This policy provides for the first time a formal, shared framework for how future revisions of IFC will be handled, ensuring predictable, transparent, and stable evolution of the standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Why the Policy Was Created<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>\n
As the global use of IFC continues to expand, ISO recognised the need for clearer rules on how the standard should evolve without disrupting existing projects, software, and long-term data. To address this, ISO\/TC 59\/SC 13 initiated the development of a compatibility policy to define:\u00a0<\/p>\n
The goal was simple: support innovation while protecting stability for the global user base.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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buildingSMART’s Role<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the development of the policy, ISO invited buildingSMART International to collaborate as a liaison.\u00a0<\/p>\n
bSI contributed practical insight from active IFC development, implementation experience, and community use cases. This ensured that the policy aligns with real-world needs while remaining fully grounded in ISO’s standardisation processes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This collaboration reinforces the strong partnership between ISO and bSI in stewarding the IFC standard.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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What the Policy Achieves<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new ISO policy brings:\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Why This Matters for the openBIM Community<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>\n
The compatibility policy strengthens IFC’s role as a dependable, long-term, open standard. It gives users, implementers, and owners the assurance that future changes will be managed responsibly and transparently.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For the wider openBIM ecosystem, it means a more robust, more predictable path forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Next Steps<\/b>\u00a0<\/p>\n
buildingSMART will continue supporting ISO in applying the policy to future revisions of ISO 16739-1 and will provide guidance to the community on what to expect as IFC continues to evolve.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Author:<\/strong> Evandro Alfieri<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" buildingSMART International is pleased to share important news with the openBIM community: ISO\/TC 59\/SC 13 has published the new Compatibility Policy for ISO 16739-1, the international standard for IFC.\u00a0 This…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":32455,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[28,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-news"],"wpsp_post_type":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buildingsmart.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}