Interoperability - What can we do to move forward?

Last week, as a group we discussed our reading of the BIM Handbook, and specifically the chapter on Interoperability. We discussed what was currently being done in the industry to provide for a standard such as this. Both Elda and Mike talked about the IFC format in their post as the main champion of interoperability. We discussed, that as good an idea as it was, it would need the complete backing of the Major players in the industry (ie: AutoDesk and Bentley). However, their involvement to me would seem like it would need a greater push than "whining" from engineers and architects. A large reason BIM has been adopted so fast over a regular CAD, is that governmental agencies have started to require a BIM model to be submitted, along with the standard plan and section drawings. I personally believe this type of requirement, lead to a faster adoption of BIM. I also believe that the same type of requirement (like specifying an IFC model with rigorous standards), could lead to better interoperability faster. I believe some governmental agencies do require an IFC model, however the regulations on exactly what is contained in the IFC model are not as strict as they could be. The question of whether we want a government dictating what regulations should be placed on IFC models however is a completely different argument.

I found what I thought was an interesting article by Voytek Pniewski, where he said this about the process one should go through to make sure that there were not any interoperability issues when opening a new BIM file:

"The tests should utilise more than one, ideally several, software applications, including IFC File analyzer, a conformance assessment tool, which is used to evaluate coverage of IFC product data model files.  Solibri Model Checker should be also employed to analyse BIM models by visual examination methods."

This seems like a very long an arduous task just to make sure that what you opened, is what you should be looking at. However, if the model you are working with is a good model (designed with exact specifications), you might actually save time that you may have spent field measuring distances by just looking for inconsistencies in the BIM. Overall, the idea of a BIM, is to save time in the beginning and have an accurate model of a building. However if all of the information that is put in the model is lost during transfer from program to program, does BIM still make as much sense?