The Role of the CIMsteel Integration Standards in Automating the Erection and Surveying of Structural Steelwork

The second release of the CIMsteel Integration Standards (CIS/2) has been endorsed by the American Institute of Steel Construction as the standard for the electronic exchange of structural steel project information for the North American steel design and construction industry. Derived from the deliverables and experiences of the Pan-European Eureka CIMsteel Project and published by the Steel Construction Institute in the UK, the CIS/2 was developed with a life-cycle view of structural steelwork information in mind. However, the primary focus of both developers and implementers of CIS/2 has been on the pre-construction processes of design, analysis, detailing, and shop fabrication. This paper examines the applicability of CIS/2 to on-site construction processes, focusing on automating the erection and surveying of structural steelwork and integrating these two processes into the overall project delivery system.