What clients order and architects deliver

What clients order and architects deliver is the Elementplan architecture book: a German workbook for BIM project management. It shows how to order results instead of prescribing methods. Volume 1 covers architecture and is released in Q1 2027. Sample, price, and release notice are on the Elementplan architecture book page.

Why this book exists

Construction does not lack data. It lacks a shared answer to four questions: which information is needed, who creates it, when it has to be there, and how you recognise a usable delivery.

That gap shows up in the order. Clients copy a BIM execution plan, prescribe use cases such as clash detection, and fund another pilot. Planners inherit a method they did not choose. The model arrives too incomplete to steer the project by quality. The fee discussion starts. Operations never uses the data.

Simon Dilhas wrote the book from that experience, as an architect and client representative who first saw rule-based model checking more than ten years ago. The promise, to check and steer a project against clear rules, is still unmet on many jobs. Motivation and new tools are not what is missing. A common foundation is: which information is actually required, who produces it, when, and for what.

In place of that foundation, projects accumulate documents, slides, and technical rules whose benefit nobody in the room can still explain. The result is effort, change orders, and resistance, without more reliable planning.

No data requirement without a concrete benefit. As little as possible, as much as necessary.

Reliable information is a leadership question as much as a technical one. Clarifying goals, stating expectations, and putting decisions on a shared information base makes leadership more effective. Automation does not fix an unclear order. Tools, including AI, process unclear orders efficiently. They do not make them clearer. Where results are generated automatically, requirements, sources, and check rules have to be sharper, or automation scales vagueness.

The Elementplan is meant to move BIM out of permanent pilot mode and into ordinary project work: order the result you need, make risks visible early, and repeat the checks. Extra scope stays extra scope. It should be ordered on purpose, with a benefit you can explain.

What the Elementplan is

The Elementplan is a catalogue of information requirements. It states which elements a model contains and which attributes those elements need for a purpose. It starts from the purpose, not from the model and not from a software product.

Every requirement traces one chain back to a project goal:

• Project goals say what the project values and which risks it reduces.
• Use cases say what the information is for and what benefit it creates.
• Information containers are where the result is delivered.
• Elements name the objects the model means.
• Attributes and value lists say which information those objects need.
• Project orders are what you can communicate and check.

You order the data and the result. A use case helps derive the information need. It does not tell the team how to produce the result.

That split resolves a real tension. Too many rules remove the team's freedom of method. Too few shared rules make automation accidental, and hard to repeat on the next project. What is standardised is the information: terms, attributes, and allowed values. How the team produces them stays free. Elementplan unifies the result, not the working method.

What is in volume 1

The book is a workbook in two parts.

• Part 1, What clients order. One project organisation, not a BIM organisation beside it. Ordering documents that state need instead of BIM bureaucracy. Goals and constraints. Use cases for ordering, quality assurance, and planning.
• Part 2, What architects deliver. A desk reference: how an element is modelled, how it is classified, and which IFC4 attributes it needs. The appendices document data structures, room names, and calculation logic.

Volume 1 holds 9 goals and constraints, 117 use cases, 54 building elements, and 99 attributes. It is a reference for project-specific decisions, not a checklist to copy in full. Not every use case belongs in every project, and no catalogue covers all of them.

The book stands on its own. The editor and viewer on pragmaticBIM.ch are optional when you select, adapt, agree, and publish the same requirements as a contract document, an IDS file, or a web view. The application takes no professional decisions, and the book does not replace a project agreement.

Who it is for

It is written for people who order, plan, model, coordinate, or check information requirements.

• Clients and project leads get a basis to order the needed results clearly and checkably, and to use BIM as risk reduction and quality assurance instead of funding another pilot. Start in part 1: organisational basics, then goals and constraints.
• BIM management and coordination get a structure that turns project goals into requirements, checks, and workflows.
• Planners and modellers get a desk reference for how an element is modelled and which information it needs. Start in part 2.
• Offices and project teams get a place to record decisions and reuse them. Shared conventions exist for drawings. For models, that shared knowledge is still missing in many offices. Project-specific decisions belong in the note fields.

How it sits next to ISO 19650, IDS, and KBOB

buildingSMART, Bauen Digital Schweiz, SIA, and KBOB already provide norms, guidance, and classifications. Elementplan builds on them and does not replace them.

ISO 19650 says information should be derived from organisation and project goals, with clear responsibility and deliveries that can be planned and checked over the life of the asset. Elementplan follows that idea. It does not take over the ISO document structure or vocabulary, including Appointing Party and Appointed Party. It translates the information need directly into goals, use cases, containers, elements, attributes, and check rules. It does not claim formal ISO 19650 conformity, and it does not replace project-specific agreements.

KBOB recommends the same commissioning principle: do not order a method in the abstract. Derive applications, services, and digital results from the client's goals. Describe interfaces, delivery dates, and formats precisely, and keep the scope as small as the purpose allows. What has been missing is an open, machine-readable reference that takes those principles down to elements, attributes, and allowed values. That is the gap this catalogue fills.

IDS checks whether delivered information matches a specification. Elementplan defines which information is needed, why, and when. A formal IDS check is one way to work with the data. The book also covers visual plausibility, further requirement checks, and calculated values.

Christoph Maurer, president of ZI/SIA, states the sequence the book accepts: experience comes before a standard, and a standard comes before a norm. With BIM, that order was reversed. International process models and fixed roles arrived before broad practice had settled, and many projects grew a BIM organisation beside project management, with its own meetings, documents, and language. This book puts the concrete task back in the centre: who needs which information, for what, and how you know it is usable. It is a reasoned set from practice, so that a standard, and later a norm, has something tested to grow from. It is not itself a standard or a norm.

The same stance applies to the Swiss data-dictionary recommendation of September 2026 (Bauen digital Schweiz / buildingSMART Switzerland, with IFMA Switzerland, Infrastruktur Hospital Schweiz, InfraSuisse, the Schweizerischer Baumeisterverband, CRB, and SIA). Define a property once and reuse it. Prefer existing IFC classes and property sets. Reference value lists instead of copying them. Derive information need from use cases. Elementplan gives those terms, attributes, and value lists stable, versioned URIs and publishes them as open data. Where another institution maintains a definition under a stable URI, the catalogue points there.

abstract has no interest in owning another norm. The interest is that something usable exists to build on. The source data is open under the PragmaticBIM Standard License. The book is a curated view of that data.

Release, language, and price

Volume 1 is in German and covers architecture. It is released in Q1 2027. French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland come next, then MEP.

• Print: CHF 120 for one copy.
• PDF, Team: up to 25 people, CHF 400.
• PDF, Organization: up to 250 people, CHF 900.
• PDF, Enterprise: unlimited, one legal entity, CHF 1'800.

The printed book is one copy. The PDF is a one-time office licence, not a subscription.

A free 12-page German sample, and a note when the book is released, are on the Elementplan architecture book page.