Who does that building data belong to anyway - to the building!

We have enough standards, we just don't use them consistently, as Pim van Meer shows in this maze. So it's not about what's missing, but in what we already have and structurally ignore. The whole construction chain has to take that responsibility.

Building is a polonaise. Nobody chooses the music.

Everyone is in their own cart, pulling hard on their own deadlines, organizing their own truth, and at the end of the ride pushing a load of information on to the next cart in the chain. Developer to architect. Architect to builder. Builder to investor. Investor to manager. Manager to investor. Investor to other investor. From sale to sale, renovation or demolition. Where building information is a relay stick that you just throw backwards.

And let's face it: that's how it often happens.

With every transfer, there is someone on the other side who opens the digital moving boxes and thinks: what is all this? Old exports, loose pdf's, unclear definitions, lists without context, folders with names like DEFINITIVE_V7_NU_ECHT, and somewhere at the bottom a file of which nobody knows who made it, but which suddenly turns out to be very important.

In a conversation with Danny Gerritsen of Altera, carteer of the IVBN's data standardization project, we arrived at a much more fundamental question. Not: how do we make the transfer better? Not: which system should win out? Not: which software will be the new holy grail?

but the real question is: whose data does it really belong to?
And the answer is uncomfortably simple.

Not from the developer.
Not from the architect.
Not from the builder.
Not from the investor.
Not from the software vendor who likes to behave as if open standards are a friendly suggestion.

The data just belongs to the building.

That's the leap of thought. Not a digital twin as a hip software product with a slick dashboard, but a building-based model. A digital twin that does not belong to a party, but to the object itself.

Like an inspection sticker belongs to an installation. Like an energy label belongs to a property. And that's exactly where this topic touches on something bigger.

Because as long as we keep thinking from A to B to C to D, we also keep organizing as if each party is only in its own cart. Danny said it pointedly: we now sometimes look one wagon ahead of us or behind us. Very occasionally two, if we're feeling adventurous. But reality has long since been chain-wide. Everyone is already connected, even if we pretend they're not.

Indeed: the pain just travels with it. And nowhere do you see this more clearly than with investors.

Because what happens too often now? An investor says goodbye to a portfolio via sale and wishes the next investor success with it. The deal is done, the buildings have been transferred and the issues now lie with someone else. Then, months later, the same party buys a portfolio and faces exactly the same situation. Then it suddenly becomes a problem, because data quality suddenly becomes strategic. Then we want structure, definitions, comparability and overview. That's almost poetic. The industry writes its own penal code. The same issue arises when the building gets a different manager; that happens more often than change of ownership.

Therefore, the message to investors is also quite simple: you have to understand this and participate in three-dimensional digitization. Not because it's fashionable. Not because someone at a conference gave a shiny story about the future, although we do that with all our love.

but because no one knows their own pain as well as you do. You just need to pick up the problem indoors. Just ask the people who buy, manage, report and sell portfolios what they run into every day. The answer is already there. It's just still locked up in loose teams, loose processes and closed systems.

Thinking big and innovation is nice. Without critical mass, it's worthless. I too was once working on the most beautiful digital solution, with as much data as possible, with richer and richer models. Until I saw what happened: a small group catches on and the rest are critical or walk away when it gets too heavy. And then innovation dies. Not on content, but on support.

Therein lies the power of MiniBIM. Not because it's small, but because it's just big enough to work. MiniBIM is not an extra model, not a new toy and not a choice. It is the minimum set you need to understand a building at all and make decisions testable.

And that's exactly where my conversation with Danny collided. My reflex was: then investors have to organize this themselves. Their own MiniBIM. Their own standard. Their own truth.

His response was simple: why should we? We don't need a new system. We already have enough standards. We just don't use them consistently.

That's where the real confrontation is. Not in what is missing, but in what we already have and structurally ignore. So the question is not what we still need to come up with, but what we are finally going to use.

We need one shared model that goes with the building. From development to design, from construction to investment, from management to transformation or demolition. Not as owned by one party, but as a shared truth around the building itself.

Filing moment

Here comes the painful version.

The industry doesn't have a data problem.
The industry has an ownership problem.

We act as if information is power. As if you lose something if you transfer it properly. While the reality is simpler: bad data just comes back. Through the back door. In your next deal.

Especially with investors, this is almost ironic. Today you sell a portfolio with holes. Tomorrow you buy one back with exactly the same holes. Then suddenly it is no longer a detail, but a risk. Then it has to be right.

Then you're not a victim of the system.
Then you are the system.

So investors: organize your data. Not for the next party, but for yourself.
Nobody else is going to feel the pain.
No one else is going to solve it.

Whose building data does it actually belong to?
Of the building.

And as long as we keep pretending that that data belongs to us, we keep saddling each other with the same mistakes, the same gaps and the same delays.

We don't solve anything.
We just push it forward.

the rest of us are just running with the cart.