Digitization is also becoming increasingly prevalent in the construction industry. For this purpose, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has been developed as a method to enable the joint management of all data generated over the entire life cycle of a building and its use by all participants. Thus, the transfer of plans or files in separate formats and the manual collection of such information will become obsolete. The approach of the FMI4BIM research project is to extend the BIM process for building and system simulation. The simulation of buildings coupled with system engineering can help the planner to optimize the dimensioning and operation of the systems.
The current standard planning process consists of collecting the required information separately and then creating models adapted to the respective problem. The reusability is often limited because different programs and data formats are used by different planners. The project will therefore develop models that can be coupled with the help of the Functional Mockup Interface (FMI) standard. The FMI standard offers the possibility to couple different simulation models without releasing source code and thus protecting the intellectual property of the model developer.

The aim is to facilitate cooperation between system designers and building planners and thus make an important contribution to the digitization in the construction and building industry.