Timber Construction Compliance Checker

The Timber Construction Compliance Checking Microservice is designed to assist professionals in ensuring that timber construction projects comply with relevant building regulations and standards. The microservice leverages BIM data and integrates with external tools to perform comprehensive compliance checks.

The key feature of the microservice is a Timber Construction Compliance Checker, which verifies compliance with specific timber construction regulations. The prototype is developed on the example of timber panel construction in German building classes 4 and 5, for which the German Model Timber Construction Building Code (“Musterholzbaurichtlinie”) applies. As an outlook, the legal repository will integrate Eurocode 5, ensuring that timber construction projects meet European standards. The prototype includes an Information Requirements component, which ensures that the BIM model meets the necessary information requirements (IRs) provided in LOIN (required for German federal buildings) and IDS formats. The microservice allows for integration with other external tools for specialized compliance checks, and its API integration exposes functionalities for seamless integration with other systems.

The microservice is implemented using Python and Django, a Python web framework, for deployment on a server. The inputs for this microservice include IRs, BIM models and construction-related data. The microservice is integrated in the ACCORD Cloud Architecture via the Integration Strategy A. The microservice’s Timber Construction Compliance Checker component verifies that the building project complies with timber construction regulations, using data from IFC models, “Dataholz.eu” constructions, and project-specific data. API endpoints provide functionalities for initiating compliance checks and retrieving results, which were developed using a Python-compliant framework for efficient request handling. Additionally, the microservice integrates with external tools, sending API requests to these tools and consolidating the results.

The workflow of the microservice begins with the service sending an API request to the BIM Portal Germany to assess the IRs in LOIN format, applying for the relevant German federal state or federal building owner. The Information Requirements component allows the mapping of those IRs with those applying to selected timber construction regulations and the export of the dataset. The microservice allows for both, external model validation, such as checking solutions provided via the BIM Portal Germany, and internal checking. For both, initiating validation checks and final compliance checks, the service sends an API request to the Timber Construction Compliance Checker tool. The tool processes the data and performs the compliance checks, sending the result back to the service. Finally, the service consolidates the results and sends them back to the tool's UI, which displays them to the user.