National foreword

This British Standard is the UK implementation of EN ISO 16757‑5:2025. It is identical to ISO 16757‑5:2025.

The UK participation in its preparation was entrusted to Technical Committee B/555, Construction design, modelling and data exchange.

A list of organizations represented on this committee can be obtained on request to its committee manager.

Contractual and legal considerations

This publication has been prepared in good faith, however no representation, warranty, assurance or undertaking (express or implied) is or will be made, and no responsibility or liability is or will be accepted by BSI in relation to the adequacy, accuracy, completeness or reasonableness of this publication. All and any such responsibility and liability is expressly disclaimed to the full extent permitted by the law.

This publication is provided as is, and is to be used at the recipient’s own risk.

The recipient is advised to consider seeking professional guidance with respect to its use of this publication.

This publication is not intended to constitute a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with a British Standard cannot confer immunity from legal obligations.

This British Standard was published under the authority of the Standards Policy and Strategy Committee on 30 November 2025.

This European Standard was approved by CEN on 29 September 2025.

CEN members are bound to comply with the CEN/CENELEC Internal Regulations which stipulate the conditions for giving this European Standard the status of a national standard without any alteration. Up-to-date lists and bibliographical references concerning such national standards may be obtained on application to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre or to any CEN member.

This European Standard exists in three official versions (English, French, German). A version in any other language made by translation under the responsibility of a CEN member into its own language and notified to the CEN-CENELEC Management Centre has the same status as the official versions.

CEN members are the national standards bodies of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and United Kingdom.

European foreword

This document (EN ISO 16757‑5:2025) has been prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 59 "Buildings and civil engineering works" in collaboration with Technical Committee CEN/TC 442 “Building Information Modelling (BIM)” the secretariat of which is held by SN.

This European Standard shall be given the status of a national standard, either by publication of an identical text or by endorsement, at the latest by April 2026, and conflicting national standards shall be withdrawn at the latest by April 2026.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. CEN shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

Any feedback and questions on this document should be directed to the users’ national standards body/national committee. A complete listing of these bodies can be found on the CEN website.

According to the CEN-CENELEC Internal Regulations, the national standards organizations of the following countries are bound to implement this European Standard: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.

Endorsement notice

The text of ISO 16757‑5:2025 has been approved by CEN as EN ISO 16757‑5:2025 without any modification.

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.

The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types of ISO document should be noted. This document was drafted in accordance with the editorial rules of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives).

ISO draws attention to the possibility that the implementation of this document may involve the use of (a) patent(s). ISO takes no position concerning the evidence, validity or applicability of any claimed patent rights in respect thereof. As of the date of publication of this document, ISO had not received notice of (a) patent(s) which may be required to implement this document. However, implementers are cautioned that this may not represent the latest information, which may be obtained from the patent database available at www.iso.org/patents. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

Any trade name used in this document is information given for the convenience of users and does not constitute an endorsement.

For an explanation of the voluntary nature of standards, the meaning of ISO specific terms and expressions related to conformity assessment, as well as information about ISO's adherence to the World Trade Organization (WTO) principles in the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), see www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html.

This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 59, Buildings and civil engineering works, Subcommittee SC 13, Organization and digitization of information about buildings and civil engineering works, including building information modelling (BIM), in collaboration with the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) Technical Committee CEN/TC 442, Building Information Modelling (BIM), in accordance with the Agreement on technical cooperation between ISO and CEN (Vienna Agreement).

A list of all parts in the ISO 16757 series can be found on the ISO website.

Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html.

Introduction

Building information modelling (BIM) provides a means for describing and displaying information required throughout the asset life cycle. Increasingly this modelling approach is expanding to encompass all aspects of the built environment, including civil infrastructure, utilities and public space.

The ISO 16757 series provides the structure of a product catalogue model for data sharing and data exchange of product models in product catalogues. It contains specifications for:

selection of products from different product classes and product variants;
combining product components and accessories to products;
geometrical representation in technical systems;
connectivity to other products in models of technical systems;
calculation of dynamic property values in accordance with the product behaviour in technical systems.

Specialist planners of complete systems for building services, for example, expect almost all of this data in the product catalogue, as they require the shape data for dimensioning and clash detection in addition to the technical design and setting of the products.

This data format provides the opportunity to search and select product data together with accessory data which can be read into software applications for planning, designing, calculating and simulating as well as for facility managing.

This document focuses only on the format of the data exchanged and not on how to process it. Notes on the implementation of the standard in application software can be found in Annex B.

This document does not directly lead to an automatic selection of products.

The product catalogue does not contain any decision criteria for this. However, the data of a product catalogue can be searched by application programs looking for a suitable product size.

According to ISO 16757‑4, this document does not provide a data template, as it assumes that these are already defined in data dictionaries according to ISO 12006‑3.

Besides this document, the ISO 16757 series contains the following documents:

ISO 16757‑1 describes the fundamental concepts and assumptions about the creation of manufacturer-related product catalogues as BIM data exchange models. It describes the content of product catalogues and the mapping of the content to a data format.
This data format provides the opportunity to search and select product data together with accessory data which can be read into software applications for planning, designing, calculating and simulating as well as for facility management.
ISO 16757‑2 describes the concept of geometry of the building services product data of a product catalogue in form of 2D or 3D symbols and 3D shape models and specifies the required spaces and ports.
It contains the fundamental concepts and assumptions about the parametric geometry of special products, used in planning software applications, e.g. for air conditioning systems such as ducts and transitions between different forms. It also contains a concept for representing products as 3D solid models made from thin sheet metal.
ISO 16757‑4 describes the data structures that are required in a data dictionary to support the exchange of product data from manufacturers to designers of building services systems.
It defines subject kinds to distinguish subjects representing products from subjects representing features of products like ports and in/outlets, it defines relationship types and a number of property kinds, in particular dynamic properties for the description of the behaviour of a product under changing conditions. In addition, ISO 16757‑4 defines a mapping to the dictionary model of ISO 12006‑3.

1 Scope

This document describes how product catalogue data for building services products is exchanged by means of ISO 16739‑1 (Industry Foundation Classes, IFC) and EN 17549‑2 from manufacturers to designers of building services systems.

This document specifies how the product catalogue structures and content are set up using the definitions stored in a data dictionary.

In scope of this document are:

processes for the provision and exchange of product catalogues;
rules for the geometrical representation of products;
representation of products, product classes, ports, in/outlets, components and accessories by using IFC;
representation of properties in IFC and the use of IFC constraints for the representation of product variants;
representation of parametric geometry and the generation of IFC geometries for selected variants;
calculation of article number.

The resulting product catalogue can be used by designers to select the desired products and integrate them into their model of the building services system.

The expected audience of this document are software providers for the built environment sector and professionals working in the sector who create product catalogues or use product catalogues by means of software tools.

Not in scope of this document is the representation of properties in data dictionaries. The use of data dictionaries is described in ISO 16757‑4.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Overview of supported processes

4.1 General

4.2 Creation of product catalogues using the definitions in the data dictionary

4.3 Provision of the product catalogue

4.4 Product determination in the product catalogue

4.5 Product integration into the technical system model

4.6 Data exchange of the technical system model

4.7 Use of product catalogues according to the ISO 16757 series

5 Product representation

5.1 Part numbers

5.2 Geometry

5.3 Symbolic geometry

5.4 Shape geometry

5.5 Ports

5.6 In/outlets

5.7 Spaces

5.8 Media data

6 Product catalogue as IFC structure

6.1 General

6.2 IFC catalogue metadata

6.3 Product classes and their structures in IFC

6.4 Product series in IFC

6.5 Components and accessories in IFC

6.6 Properties and constraints for property values in IFC

6.7 Parametric geometry in IFC

6.8 Product ports in IFC

6.9 Product in/outlets in IFC

6.10 Part numbers in IFC tables or created by scripts

6.11 External media data

7 Centrally stored property data dictionary

8 JavaScript (ECMA script) functions

Bibliography

BS EN ISO 16757-5:2025

Data structures for electronic product catalogues for building services - Product catalogue exchange format

Current

Published:

30 Nov 2025