About the AGCxml Project
The AGCxml Project is an industry-wide initiative funded and led by Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) and managed, under a contract with AGC, by the National Institute of Building Sciences. The goal of the project is to enable the efficient and reliable exchange of electronic construction project information among all building design and construction professionals. While building information modeling (BIM) is designed to facilitate the electronic exchange and the effective use of information about a building facility throughout the life cycle of a building facility, the AGCxml Project focuses on transactional data—which may or may not be "building information"—that architects, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, material suppliers, and building owners typically exchange during the building design and construction process. Most of this information is still commonly exchanged in paper documents (or electronic equivalents of paper documents) such as owner/contractor agreements, schedules of values, requests for information (RFIs), requests for proposals (RFPs), architect/engineer supplemental instructions, change orders, change directives, submittals, applications for payment, and addenda, to name a few.
The project will result in a set of extensible markup language (XML) schemas that will enable design and construction professionals to reliably exchange project information among dissimilar and proprietary software applications, without requiring the reengineering or redesign of those applications. The AGCxml schemas will establish a common, non-proprietary data format and classification system. Software developers will be able to modify their applications with minimal effort to import and export data in AGCxml format, without having to change or even share their proprietary software code and data formats. When completed, the schemas, which will remain the property of AGC, will be made publicly available and will be licensed at no cost and in perpetuity to any party for any legitimate purpose in support of the exchange of AGCxml data. The project will be coordinated with other data format standards development efforts worldwide to ensure the compatibility of AGCxml data with those efforts.
To ensure that the AGCxml schemas serve the needs of the industry, NIBS and AGC are empanelling a Review and Validation Committee (RVC) of design and construction professionals in all disciplines—a cross-section of the industry that includes architects, building owners, contractors, engineers, material suppliers, software developers, and subcontractors nationwide. The RVC is a reflection of the industry not just by discipline but also by functional job description—owners of companies, project managers, job captains, construction site supervisors, clerks-of-the-works, and bookkeepers—anyone and everyone who currently uses construction contract documents and related paper forms to do their jobs every day. Representatives of software companies are also invited to serve on the RVC and to provide their technical specifications for AGCxml.
The actual work of the project will be conducted by a technical team of experts with substantial knowledge of XML and related building industry interoperability efforts worldwide.
Technical oversight of the project is provided by the AGCxml Task Force, a panel of volunteer AGC members that will ensure that the deliverables of the project meet the project requirements.