The construction sector has been experiencing a real revolution for several years by taking digital tools into account in the act of building. This digital transition in the building sector should lead to positive effects such as lower construction costs, reduced environmental impact, the construction of low-energy/carbon buildings over their entire life cycle, as well as better traceability of the construction, renovation and operation of buildings.

Regarding this last point, BIM should make it possible to better identify the nature of the construction materials or objects used in the building, thus ensuring better traceability and facilitating upkeep and maintenance operations.

To select the generic products or objects used in a construction project, construction companies should, in the years to come, use e-catalogues of products or objects, in which they will identify the products or objects that meet the specifications defined by the designer or construction company.

The work undertaken by the French PTNB in recent years has made it possible to identify the technical characteristics of products/objects used in the act of construction, based on the French XP P07-150 standard. In this respect, the PO BIM project should make it possible to constitute a library of properties attached to generic objects, gathered in a “Dictionary”. Manufacturers' or distributors' e-catalogues will thus present values for each of the relevant properties listed in the dictionary.

AFOCERT emphasises that the data that will be associated with the properties of the products or objects needs to be made reliable, since it should be used in particular in the design software to calculate the performance of the work or the construction system. Two cases can then arise:

• Either the values are declared by the manufacturer, which implies standard safety factors,
• Either the values are certified and, in this case, the safety factors are reduced.

To ensure reduced safety coefficients and optimise the performance calculations of the structure, it is therefore important that the user can access values certified by an accredited third-party organisation.

The use of data from certified products/objects will thus make it possible to give confidence to the users of these products, and to provide them with important information:

• Compliance of products with product standards and/or French NF DTU (when they exist) and verification of the performance achieved by the product undertaken by a third-party organisation (which is not always the case with CE marking);
• Reduction of measurement uncertainties, which saves material costs;
• Performance calculations for reliable and optimised structures.

For example, the certifications of works (under the NF, NF HQE, Promotelec, Leed, Breeam brands, etc.) generally require that the products used be certified or subject to technical advice. The use of certified products and reliable performance data for these products makes it possible to optimise the performance calculations of the structures, a definite advantage for the client.

AFOCERT therefore proposes that the certification of products be made visible in the dictionary of product properties, considering the fact that it constitutes important information for users of products/objects, and a tool for making BIM data more reliable.

Adding a “Certification” property and/or identifying certified properties/characteristics for a given object would in this respect be avenues to explore in ongoing work on BIM.