The "One BIM Standard" Is a Myth (And How We Solve Data Anarchy Anyway)

Anyone trying to develop a single BIM standard for every project participant is chasing a phantom. It will not exist in the foreseeable future. The solution is not thicker handbooks—it is minimalist workflows and automated translation.

Whether AutoCAD, Revit, MicroStation, or Vectorworks: anyone who has developed digital standards for years eventually realizes that technical formats like IFC are the foundation, but they do not solve the efficiency problem on their own.

The problem is a logical conflict of interest in Swiss construction:

• The owner's project manager handles multiple projects simultaneously. They do not want to learn a new CDE (Common Data Environment) for every project or adapt to each architect's individual modeling style. They want instant answers on cost and area questions.
• The planning and construction company works in parallel for five different building owners. It cannot—and will not—completely overhaul its internal workflow for every single client.

The attempt to squeeze both worlds into a rigid, page-long rulebook produces only one thing: data garbage.

The 3 Standardization No-Gos (And the Pragmatic Alternative)

In Swiss practice—often driven by the need to map complex cost classifications like eBKP-H—standardization projects frequently head in exactly the wrong direction. If you want data quality, you must avoid three cardinal errors:

Error 1: Manual entry of irrelevant codes

A drafter or architect should never be forced to manually type complex classification codes into a model that are completely irrelevant to their actual work. That inevitably leads to errors.

The pragmatic strategy: Use IFC's inherent logic. Codes like eBKP can be computed automatically via standardized base attributes such as PredefinedType, IsExternal, or LoadBearing—combined with simple geometric logic (e.g. "Is the component above or below terrain?").

Error 2: The "more data, the better" mentality

Building owners especially tend to order gigantic volumes of data upfront. The result is incomplete data corpses. Before requesting any data field, force yourself to answer three questions:

1. What exactly do I need this data for in operation or during the project?
2. What is my concrete quality assurance workflow to verify this data?
3. Can this value be calculated automatically from existing inputs?

Error 3: Endless Excel lists and theoretical Word documents

Nobody reads 80-page PDF guidelines. Communicate requirements database-first, built bottom-up, and above all: visually. Modeling guidelines should ideally explain how to cut a component with images—not text deserts.

The Solution: Translate Instead of Crush

We must stop searching for the "one standard to rule them all". Instead, we must learn to use existing technical standards as a foundation and build clever workflows that automatically translate different standards into each other.

A lean, minimalist standard is one where the person at the computer only enters data they actually understand. Automation handles the rest in the background.

That relieves the project team from repetitive queries, eliminates endless waiting for answers, and creates room for what really matters: creating value and building good buildings.

End standard overload—contact pragmaticBIM for a minimalist, automated BIM workflow