Who is responsible for producing and checking COBie data?

COBie is often handed to one person, usually late in construction, who then spends months chasing information they cannot verify alone. The standard intends something different. Several parties produce the data, the owner defines what is required and how it will be accepted, and a named coordinator manages the exchange. NIBS, which maintains COBie, says it succeeds when all project stakeholders take part, from architects, engineers and contractors to suppliers, tradespeople, commissioning agents and the facility owner, each providing the information they hold at specified milestones.

Responsibility, field by field

NIBS recommends that the BIM execution plan state which phases need a COBie deliverable and who is responsible for updating each field, and suggests that larger projects may need a dedicated COBie execution plan. Its own illustration is simple: the designer updates equipment name, type and location during design, and the constructor later adds manufacturer, model number and serial number before substantial completion, building on the designer's data. The plan should also say when responsibility for the data passes from one party to the next.

A responsibility matrix for a building-services package

Each project sets its own matrix; this one shows how the split might look for a building-services package.

Coordination and authorship are different roles. The coordinator consolidates records and chases gaps, but that does not make them answerable for every manufacturer's technical detail.

The owner's side must be named too

NIBS advises stating who will review the deliverable and who will take responsibility for the data after approval. Both roles sit on the owner's side. If nobody there is named, acceptance becomes a formality and the data has no custodian from the day the building opens.

The operator should be involved early for the same reason. The people who will import and use the records are best placed to help set identifiers, classifications and the level of asset breakdown.

Check at every milestone

Staged deliveries, with an issue log and clear evidence that each issue was closed, spread the checking across the project. Automated checks find structural problems such as missing required fields, broken references and duplicate names. Accuracy needs people: technical review, and sampling against the installed assets.

Substitutions and late changes need a route into the records; otherwise accepted design information survives into the final exchange after the installation has changed. The commissioning team, which sees what was actually installed, is often best placed to flag those discrepancies.

Keep personal data out of the exchange

COBie version 3 removed the "CreatedBy" and "CreatedOn" fields from its tables; NIBS's change log explains that these could conflict with privacy laws such as the GDPR and were not needed on every record. Contact information still appears, in the Company table for example, so the owner should decide with its data-protection adviser which contact details the exchange carries, using role-based contacts where possible.