WASHINGTON - The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) announced it has reached an agreement with the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) for the development of AGCxml, a standard for exchanging electronic data among architecture/engineering/construction (A/E/C) business process software applications in order to increase efficiency and collaboration among facility owners and design and construction professionals.

"The development of AGCxml has the potential of saving contractors countless hours of data-entry, which can lead to hard-dollar savings," said AGC CEO Stephen E. Sandherr. "This robust solution will also support the differing office applications employed by various segments of the construction industry."

AGCxml will address the interoperability issue in the construction industry, enabling any software products or tools using AGCxml to exchange information in a manner that is recognizable between authors using different software systems. While building information modeling has received a great deal of recent attention in the industry, AGCxml is intended to address a related challenge by facilitating the reliable, electronic exchange of the business-to-business transactional data created by owners, contractors, and design professionals in the course of every design and construction project and found in such documents or forms as owner/contractor agreements, change orders, and requests for information.

"This is a very exciting opportunity," said NIBS' President David A. Harris, FAIA. "Our organizations' collaboration on this ground-breaking buildingSMART initiative will couple recognized IT professionals with AGC's recognized construction business leaders to foster more efficient and sensible business practices. By taking the lead in this effort, AGC demonstrates its commitment to improving the ability of its members to collaborate with their business partners and better serve their clients on every project."

AGCxml will be designed to enable the efficient exchange of electronic construction project information between various industry software applications, including software designed for generating construction contract documents, project management, accounting, or related construction workflow systems.

Publication date: 07/10/2006