Construction Classification -Approach in Small Societies

Much is written and discussed about the problems of and in the construction sector, especially due to very low efficiency level compared to all the other industries/businesses. Accordingly, different improvement possibilities are proposed – starting from engineering improvements of the construction technology and ending up with reasonable restructuring of the management schemes and methods used in the sector. No universal and miracle cure has been neither proposed by the academicians nor invented and introduced in business in practice, especially on the sites. Digitalization is currently considered perhaps as one of the key preconditions to start with to increase the efficiency. The magical acronym BIM is currently used in most of the academic papers and even politicians have started to advocate it – this the only right way we have to go! Information is in the central position in the word BIM joining the buildings (B) and management (M) or modelling. Certainly, information is the cornerstone when solving several problems of the sector. But very often it is repeated, that information has value only when it is available at right time and in a right place. Shortly – clearly and easily accessible for all the users. In a small country like Estonia with less than 1.5 mil inhabitants it may seem there are no borders for communication and information exchange. But for years we have targeted now to improve especially the information model of the whole construction and property sector. The quite fragmented usage of digital tools on only some stages (e.g. by the designers or by manufacturers) of the lifecycle do not help much to improve the general situation when the others (e.g. clients and maintenance staff) are not involved in this information flow. The starting point here is the so-called concept of introducing the “common language” – introducing the unified classification system for the construction and property/facilities sector. There are numerous construction classification systems already proposed world-wide, several of which are already oldfashioned and fragmented and not suitable for integrated digital usage anymore. The others are rather contemporary ones, but too much regulated and fixed solutions, not allowing the national legal and cultural peculiarities to be considered.