This paper describes the integration of the OSCON (Open Systems for CONstruction: DOE funded project) and COMMIT (Construction Modelling Methodologies for Intelligent information inTegration: EPSRC funded project) construction information models. These models have been developed to handle issues related to the management of construction information and to support both the sharing of information and decision-making in collaborative projects. The OSCON project revolves around a central object-oriented information model. This model consists of domain models, which support integration of information within a specific domain, e.g. design and estimating. The integrated database within OSCON supports the functions of design, estimating and planning by allowing these construction phases to effectively share information dynamically and intelligently. In order to support collaborative engineering, however, it is important not only to share information, but also to manage that information in a manner that actively promotes integration. To achieve this aim, COMMIT project defines mechanisms to handle a number issues relating to the management of information to support decision-making in a collaborative projects. This includes: ownership, right, and responsibilities, versioning of design components, recording of intent behind decisions leading to new architectural design, tracking of dependencies between building elements and notification and propagation of architectural design changes.

This paper also describes the extension of the OSCON and COMMITS conceptual models to establish standard models for architectural design. This is by complying to the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) for common interpretation of construction design objects and also with CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) for distribution of these objects amongst the construction applications. This integration results in the development of a distributed object-oriented database for storing and managing collaborative architectural design. By supporting collaborative architectural design and managing the information in a manner that actively promotes integration, this integrated system responds to the need of the construction industry to reduce the fragmentation and increase competitiveness.

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