Purpose Until now, the usage and usability factors of construction operation building information exchange (COBie) datasheet has remained largely overlooked. This oversight may be the potential factor in the lower adoption rates as well as effective utilization of COBie datasheet in the architectural, engineering and construction – facilities management industry. Cobie Data drops as a concept has difficulty in adoption pertaining to lengthy process of data capturing with high reliance on manual inputs. Finding from this study will enhance the usability aspects of COBie by looking at the entire process of data assembling in conjuncture with design development and using it to understand the project changes. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The study is aimed at solving a practical issue in handling COBie datasheets. The study uses iterative steps from design thinking and software development process (SDP) for development of the system. The iterative approach from design thinking helped to understand the problem scenarios, development of rule sets and analysis of various options to tackle this issue. SDP was used for the development and validation of the COBieEvaluator prototype. Findings Despite the information exchange standards such as COBie is available for adoption for quite some time, its perceived value in the whole chain is less described. Various concepts such as preparing COBie sheets from beginning of project are discussed but hardly adopted due to lengthy process. The study helps in substantiating the need for a continuous data capture and showcase how this continuous data capture can help in tracking various design and equipment changes inside a project, using COBieEvaluator. A comparative view over the data helps in giving fruitful information about the project. The system also verify the quality of data inside the COBie datasheet by not only looking at the cell value inputs but also looking at the entire information linkage and finding the gaps. Originality/value COBie has mostly being analyzed as an output and its benefits. However, some important aspects of COBie datasheet such as the process of capturing and verifying it, and understanding the meaning of the changes during incremental building of COBie datasheet, is largely overlooked. This study use the concept behind COBie data drops and devise a system to help track effect of project design changes on COBie datasheet. It also highlights the importance of not looking COBie datasheets only as a FM handover requirement, but a source of information which can help various stakeholders to get useful information about the project development. The study propose a comparative dimension over the COBie sheet to get useful insight over the project development.

Purpose Until now, the usage and usability factors of Construction Operation Building information exchange (COBie) datasheet have remained largely overlooked. This oversight may be the potential factor in the lower adoption rates as well as the effective usage of COBie datasheet in the architecture, engineering and construction-facilities management industry. The purpose of this study is to investigate the benefits and key issues associated with COBie datasheet handling and identify the key technological solutions, which can help in mitigating the identified issues. Design/methodology/approach A literature review was conducted to identify the key benefits of using COBie and issues, which are associated with COBie datasheet handling. This paper has also designed a questionnaire based on a literature review and surveyed professionals who are well versed with handling COBie datasheet. Using responses, the issues are analyzed and discussed using non-parametric statistical analysis. Findings A total of 9 key benefits and 24 key issues categorized under three groups of usability issues, technical issues and organizational/other issues were identified. The results from the survey agree with all the key issues associated with COBie datasheet handling (with 86 responses). This research also proposes key ideas, that can help in mitigating these issues. Originality/value There is a paucity in published literature, which discusses in detail about the various issues associated with COBie datasheet handling. This research study aims to address this gap by identifying key issues by looking at the entire COBie data-capturing process holistically. Finding from this study can help professionals to understand these issues and develop appropriate technological solutions, which can make COBie data capturing and understanding easier. The findings could also assist in increasing the adoption rate of COBie, which could be achieved through mitigation of identified issues.

Building information modeling (BIM) for facilities management (FM) has been gaining considerable attention. Construction operations building information exchange (COBie) datasheets are conceptualized as an electronic format of data for FM handover extracted from the BIM model and supplemented with information from other sources. To build an efficient COBie datasheet, it is advocated to build and verify data at all stages of design and construction, commonly known as data drops. Nevertheless, data consistency verification is a difficult task pertaining to COBie's complex structure and data representation. This study aims to understand the challenges associated with the COBie datasheet verification and consistency checking process, especially during data drop stages, and develop a solution to mitigate these challenges. The study uses a combined methodology of design thinking and waterfall model from the software development process. The outcome of the research study manifests in a prototype application. The prototype application can help in verifying COBie datasheet consistency during data drop stages. Additionally, this study proposes a new dimension to utilize the COBie datasheet to track various asset-related changes in a project by comparing COBie datasheets and visualizing this data in a visually interactive manner using a property graph model.

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BIM to FM has gained considerable attention. Nevertheless, BIM adoption for FM is still low. Issues such as lack of standardized process to develop FM data during design and construction stages, Standardized data format for data transfer, and fragmented databases are highlighted in multiple BIM-FM research. COBie defines when, how, and what data needs to be captured for FM purposes. However, previous research combined with explorative studies highlighted several challenges with handling the COBie datasheet, especially its widely used spreadsheet format. This study aims to identify the issues associated with COBie handling (especially its spreadsheet format) and propose a COBie Dataset Management System framework (CDMS) to help solve these issues. In developing the proposed CDMS framework, a critical review of the published articles related to the COBie datasheet has been conducted. An exploratory study using a BIM Model was conducted along with the literature review to understand the key challenges highlighted in the reviewed articles. Based on the identified key issues, underlying reasons were recognized, and key ideas for the framework have been developed, potentially solving these key challenges. The research finding will help develop COBie-centric applications and enhance the entire COBie data capturing workflow.