Foreword

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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).

This second edition cancels and replaces the first edition ( ISO 23387:2020 ), which has been technically revised.

The main changes are as follows:

the data model has been harmonised with ISO 12006-3:2022 ;
an XML Schema Definition has been provided.

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 digital process for describing and displaying information required in the planning, design, construction and operation of assets. This approach encompasses all aspects of the built environment, including civil infrastructure, utilities and public space.

The ISO 19650 series sets out the concepts and principles for business processes across the built environment sector in support of the management and production of information during the life cycle of assets when using building information modelling (BIM). To support the management and production of information in these business processes, standardization is of the highest importance. Machine-interpretable data are essential to providing a reliable and sustainable exchange of information in an asset life cycle process.

Data templates provide a standardized data structure to describe the characteristics of objects enabling seamless information exchanges of construction sector business semantics through the life cycle of assets.

This document enables data templates to be standardized and made available across the built environment sector, and where applicable through data dictionaries based on ISO 12006-3 .

Data templates can be used in conjunction with Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) in ISO 16739-1 .

The target audience of this document is:

software developers, for embedding the data structure in software, platform etc.;
built environment sector domain experts appointed to create data templates based on sources describing information needs;
sector practitioners, as they provide the demand, use of data, and process etc.;
authorities, as they review and check all relevant submissions;
research and development personnel, as they support the innovation and continuous development of data templates;
educational institutions, as the concept of data templates, same as BIM, and digital information principles should be merged into education and training programs;
developers (asset owners), as they need a clearer vision on data template, hence to put this as part of the tender documents.

1 Scope

This document provides the concept of data templates developed to enable machine interpretability based on a standardized data structure, carrying the alphanumerical information for any object used in the life cycle of assets.

This document provides a description of how data templates are implemented following ISO 12006-3 .

This document provides a methodology to create and maintain data templates in data dictionary.

This document provides guidance for linking between data templates and classification systems within data dictionaries based on ISO 12006-3 .

This document provides an XML Schema Definition (XSD) representing an implementation of the ISO 23387 and ISO 12006-3 data models.

It is not within the scope of this document to provide the content of any data templates.

2 Normative references

3 Terms and definitions

4 Data template structure

4.1 General

4.2 UML representation of a data template structure

4.3 URIs usage for ISO 23887 data model

4.4 Data modelling

5 ISO 12006-3 representation

5.1 General

5.2 Definition of subject kinds

5.3 Specialization of dictionary meta level subject kinds

5.4 Subject relationships

5.5 Property relationships

5.6 Data template representation following ISO 12006-3

6 XML representations

Bibliography

ISO 23387:2025

Building information modelling (BIM). Data templates for objects used in the life cycle of assets

Current

Published:

22 Sep 2025