DesConOps · The askThe parts exist. Let's build the pipeline.
One production system across the two handoffs where firms meet. Open at the interface. Measured at the gate.
- 1Which handoff costs your organization the most today?
- 2If ten verified changes a day were possible on your projects, what would you build first?
- 3What would you need to see before you trusted a shared record with your data?
Every reply is read; what we learn is published without names and sets the first working-group agenda. DesConOps definitions and schemas are published under Apache 2.0 in the open standard linked here; the crosswalks follow there as the working group builds them.
DesConOps
Design, construct and operate as one production system, and what ten verified changes a day would take
AI is about to multiply what design and engineering firms can produce. Software has already lived through this, and its research is clear: AI amplifies the delivery system an organization already has, strengths and dysfunctions alike. Throughput rose, and delivery instability rose with it.
Summary
Construction does not have that pipeline. Every project leaks information at its handoffs, and the record is re-keyed by hand at each border between firms. The loss shows up on the jobsite as RFIs, rework and change orders, but it starts upstream, and the people who bear it sit at the end of the pipe. Three decades of better software inside each phase has not bent the productivity curve, because the loss is between phases.
This paper defines the pipeline construction needs and names it DesConOps: design, construct and operate as one production system. Three loops, two releases, twelve steps, one contract. Each step takes a keyed input, checks it against a published requirement, passes a gate held by someone with authority, and emits a record with its provenance. Four metrics, translated from software's DORA research, show whether it is working.
Most of DesConOps already exists as open standards: IFC, IDS, BCF, bSDD, ETIM, COBie. Mapped against the twelve steps, three gaps remain: a shared release gate, the specification-to-product crosswalk, and the operate-to-design loop. The ecosystem is moving onto this shape now; the openBIM Award finalists and the agents the major vendors are announcing both show it. The paper sets out the definition, the evidence, the value at stake, a first step for six roles, and an open invitation to build and measure the standard together.
What the paper finds
rework from poor data and miscommunication, a year at 2025 spending
median RFI response time
cross-firm handoffs that stay manual with three non-sharing platforms
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