Interesting to see some big Bentley clients who have been on one or the other CAD/BIM format try to open up and 'liberise' their deliverables requirements.
There seems to be some leeway offered to professional services vendors to allow them to use their BIM authoring app of choice with the proviso that the 'originating format' will be converted to the client's legacy format on handover. This is probably in response to the fact that requiring a single project platform can be onerous if the platform is not widely used.
I think that a lot of commercial clients would accept a neutral transfer format like IFC, especially if they are one-off or infrequent builders; but this will be more problematic for big asset owner-operators who would be constantly adding to their portfolio. Here, a door or wall that loses its intelligence and becomes non-editable on handover will be difficult to justify. I suspect that most OO's still require a copy of the model/deliverables in the original format to be handed over for this reason, but this will not eliminate the inevitable headaches due to duplication, interop gaps etc down the road.
Anyone come across a BEP requirement to ensure round tripping? This would be the obvious answer to demonstrating to the client organisation that they will not end up with 'retarded' info on completion.
It would be interesting to hear from Bentley as well. Bentley has its i-model plugin for Revit, IFC, DWG import tools. I can see services vendors punting the problem to Bentley by stating in their BEP that Bentley's i-model plugin will be the means provide 'native' info.... in due course. If there are problems... well, the client chose Bentley to begin with and should take it up with them and if necessary pay them to correct the problem.
The big risk for the services provider is that they may be stuck with the risk of having to re-model a lot of their work at the end of the job. An unknown overhead that will be difficult to allow for. This is especially true when the client hasn't fully defined his deliverables requirements, and expects help from the services vendors in firming them up.
One does wonder if the client is shooting himself in the foot by being 'too nice'... especially with short programmes. They will have wait to get a BEP from the services vendor, get someone who understands both platforms to review it to ensure its not all vapourware; test the a credible test case model before making a decision. Meanwhile the vendor is to progress the design at risk.