XML Application in AEC Industry

The exchange and reuse of the information have become a much more critical issue for the success of the project management in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. The appearance of Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides a potentially well-adopted solution to alleviate the pain of data exchange. Based on XML, this research proposes an XML-based Distributed Construction Estimating System (XDCES) to reduce the redundancy and overload of cost estimating information exchange. Thus, information can be inputted once and reused where and when necessary. In this way, although, the focus of XDCES is on the estimating task, its conclusions are generally applicable to other forms of information exchange. In addition, this research surveys several existing XML applications in the AEC industry and proposes a framework for the ongoing aecXML, a framework for using the XML standard for electronic communications in the AEC industry.