Four in one sweep: New VDI 3805 guidelines for building automation and electrical engineering

The working groups “BIM and Building Automation“ and "BIM and Electrical Engineering" of the VDMA Automation + Management Association for House + Buildings and the working group VDI 3805 "Electrical Engineering and Building Automation" have developed four draft guidelines at one go with the help of CADENAS as technology partner. As of May 1, 2021, sheets 51 (sensors), 52 (building automation and control systems), 53 (control cabinets) and 61 (installation connector systems) are available as green prints. "Never before in the history of the VDI have so many guidelines been published at once in one series," enthuses Karsten Spieß, Head of Data Management BIM / MEP at CADENAS as well as Vice Chairman in the VDI main committee VDI 3805 “Electrical Engineering and Building Automation”. "Thanks to the great performance of all participants, we were able to take a big step forward in integrating components of Building Automation and Electrical Engineering into the BIM process."

The VDI guideline series 3805 "Product data exchange in technical building equipment" serves as a standardized interface for the provision of structured and classified data for MEP. It regulates the general product data model, the data structure and the description of geometric and technical data and performance characteristics of components for building services. VDI 3805 is thus an essential basic work without which it is not possible to work in the subsequent BIM process. In the past, manufacturers offered their technical or geometric data in many different formats. This created a great deal of work for manufacturers, software providers and for the users themselves, as well as a high error rate. "Thanks to our standardization work, manufacturers now only have to prepare and maintain one standardized data format. This eliminates the need for time-consuming conversions to special formats," explains Thomas Müller, Deputy Managing Director of Automation + Management Association for House + Buildings at VDMA, the largest network organization in the European mechanical and plant engineering industry.

VDMA decided to tackle the BIM method about four years ago under the advice of Karsten Spieß. "We know that BIM is the future of civil engineering. That's why we are paving the way for component manufacturers to enter the BIM planning process to ensure they are better perceived by planners and architects," states Thomas Müller. "We are working at full speed to expand VDI 3805 to include other areas of building services, such as safety engineering. Currently, we have six more sheets in the pipeline and hope that the entire field of building services can soon be represented as a continuous digital twin."

Above all, MEP planners also benefit from the standardization work of the associations. They work with different target systems, which made cooperation difficult in the past, as there often were breaks between the individual trades (heating, plumbing, ventilation, electrical engineering, building automation) during the handover of building elements. "The fact that electrical signal and communication connections are now also stored in VDI 3805 means that planners of building services can now switch from one target system to the other without having to laboriously type in technical data sheets by hand, as was previously the case," says a delighted Karsten Spieß. "Our next step is to incorporate room functions of building automation based on VDI 3814 into VDI 3805. It is imperative that the use cases of the technical components are mapped as well. This ensures that the BIM process does not end when the property is handed over to the operator but can be continued by facility management."

Karsten Spieß and the team of the new CADENAS Competence Center for BIM support component manufacturers in the optimal provision and marketing of VDI 3805 compliant product data for MEP. With the digital product catalog solution by CADENAS, manufacturers can generate extensive multi BIM & CAD product data. This makes it possible to offer planning data with millions of combinations in terms of CAD system, classification, specifications, level of geometry, level of information, languages, etc. from a central database - no matter what individual requirements customers have for the respective product data.