The standard that organizes information in BIM is intimidating in its name and its language, but what it asks for is, underneath, what every well-organized firm should already be doing.
Sooner or later the acronym shows up: in a public tender, in a contract with a developer, in a request for proposal that demands "compliance with ISO 19650". Then the scramble begins to work out what it is, and a first read of the standard usually makes things worse, because the text is written in the dry language of a technical committee, full of terms nobody uses in the daily life of a firm.
The good news is that the content is simpler than the form. ISO 19650 does not invent a new way of designing. It organizes one thing only: who produces which information, in what format, at what moment, and where that information lives. Understand that sentence and you have the essentials of the series.
What ISO 19650 is
It is a series of international standards on information management in building and infrastructure projects, using BIM. The full name of part 1 says exactly that: organization and digitization of information about buildings and civil engineering works, including building information modelling.
Notice what sits at the center: information. Not the model, not the software, not 3D. ISO 19650 treats the model as a container of information and concerns itself with the rules for how that information is created, how it circulates, how it is approved and how it is delivered.
It came out of British practice. The United Kingdom had BS 1192 and the PAS 1192 series, developed through the 2010s to make the UK public-works BIM mandate workable. When that matured, it became an international standard: parts 1 and 2 of ISO 19650 were published in December 2018.
What ISO 19650 is not
Worth spelling out, because nearly all the confusion starts here:
- It is not a software manual. It does not name Archicad, Revit or any other, and it does not say how to model a wall.
- It is not mandatory on its own. A technical standard is not a law. It becomes mandatory when a contract or a public tender requires it, and that is happening more and more.
- It is not a synonym for BIM. BIM is the process. ISO 19650 is the standardized way of managing information inside it.
- It does not require certification to be used. There are third-party certification schemes, such as the Kitemark from the UK’s BSI, taken up by some companies and some software vendors, but no firm needs a seal in order to work to the standard.
The parts of the series
| Part | Subject | Published |
|---|---|---|
| 19650-1 | Concepts and principles | 2018 |
| 19650-2 | Delivery phase of the assets (design and construction) | 2018 |
| 19650-3 | Operational phase of the assets | 2020 |
| 19650-4 | Information exchange | 2022 |
| 19650-5 | Security-minded approach to information management | 2020 |
| 19650-6 | Health and safety information | 2025 |
For an architecture firm, what really matters are parts 1 and 2. Part 1 gives the vocabulary and the concepts. Part 2 describes the process of the design and construction phase, which is where the firm lives.
ISO 19650 in Brazil
ABNT, the Brazilian standards body, published the Brazilian versions of parts 1 and 2 on 27 May 2022, as ABNT NBR ISO 19650-1:2022 and ABNT NBR ISO 19650-2:2022. Other parts of the series already have a Brazilian version too. That matters more than it sounds: it means the standard exists in Portuguese, with translated terminology, and can be cited directly in a contract in Brazil.
In the Brazilian public sector the road is already open. Decree 10,306/2020, part of the Estratégia BIM BR, Brazil’s national BIM strategy (Decree 9,983/2019), set the use of BIM in works contracted by the federal government in successive phases, starting in 2021, 2024 and 2028. And the agencies that contract in BIM take ISO 19650 as the backbone: the BIM technical requirements handbook of DNIT, the federal highway department, cites ABNT NBR ISO 19650-1 and 19650-2 as guiding standards and builds its own information requirements and its Common Data Environment on them.
A private architecture firm is not directly covered by any of those decrees. But it works for the people who are.
The five concepts that get you 90% of the way there
1. The roles: who asks, who leads, who delivers
The standard uses three roles instead of "client", "designer" and "consultant":
- Appointing party: the one who asks for the information and sets the requirements. Usually the client or the owner of the project.
- Lead appointed party: the one who leads the information delivery and coordinates everyone else. On many architecture projects, that is the architecture firm.
- Appointed party: the one who delivers the information for its own scope. Structure, MEP, landscape, lighting.
The point the standard makes here is subtle and important: the roles come from the appointment, not from the profession. The same firm can be the lead appointed party on one project and an appointed party on another, with different information obligations in each.
2. Information requirements: what the thing you are modeling is for
This is the central idea of the standard, and it is a cascade. It starts from the need of whoever is going to use the information and comes down to what has to be in the model.
The cascade of information requirements
Put in the firm’s terms: someone, somewhere, is going to use that piece of data. The standard exists so that you know who that someone is before you decide what to model.
3. The BIM Execution Plan (BEP)
The BEP is the document in which the team answers the EIR. It says how the information will be produced: who does what, to which deadlines, to which naming standards, in which exchange formats, and to what level of detail at each stage.
Part 2 puts the BEP at two moments, which almost nobody notices on a first read: there is a pre-appointment version, submitted with the tender response, and a confirmed version, adjusted once the team has been appointed and assembled. Alongside it come the information delivery plans, the Master Information Delivery Plan (MIDP) and the Task Information Delivery Plans (TIDP), which set out the dates of every delivery, task by task.
If you have read our article on common mistakes in BIM implementation, this is the document that makes mistake number 2 disappear.
4. The Common Data Environment (CDE)
It is the single source of information for the project. It is not necessarily an expensive platform: it is an agreed environment, with rules, in which every file has a unique identifier, a revision, and a state that says what can be done with it.
The four states of a file in the Common Data Environment
This is the concept with the most immediate effect on everyday work. It puts an end to "send me the latest version on WhatsApp" and to the chronic doubt about which file counts.
A detail that almost every article in Portuguese gets wrong. That famous naming convention, with fields for project, originator, volume, level, type, discipline and number, is not in the body of ISO 19650. It comes from the standard’s UK national annex.
What ISO requires is that an agreed naming standard exist on the project, not that specific one. In other words: you can adopt the British convention, or define your own, as long as it is consistent and written into the BIM Execution Plan.
5. Level of Information Need
The standard replaced the logic of "level of detail" with level of information need, set out in the European standard EN 17412-1. The difference is not semantic: instead of picking an LOD off a ready-made table, you define how much geometric, alphanumeric and documentation information each element has to carry in order to serve a specific purpose, in a specific delivery.
The principle, worth repeating: extra information is cost, not quality.
The part 2 process, in one pass
Part 2 organizes the design and construction phase into eight linked activities: assessment and need, invitation to tender, tender response, appointment, mobilization, collaborative production of information, information model delivery and project close-out.
There is no need to memorize it. What matters is noticing that half the process happens before anybody opens the software. Requirements, tender, appointment and mobilization come first. It is the exact opposite of what happens in most firms, where modeling starts on Monday and the rules get invented along the way.
The standard is changing
Parts 1, 2 and 3 are under revision, the first since the original editions of 2018 and 2020. The public-consultation drafts circulated in 2026, and the new editions are expected between late 2026 and 2027.
The structural change announced is significant: the processes of parts 2 and 3 are likely to be merged into a single life-cycle process, erasing the split between the delivery phase and the operational phase, and part 3 is likely to become implementation guidance. Until then, the current editions remain valid and remain what contracts cite.
There is no reason to wait for the revision before starting. Nothing described above is going away.
What this changes in your firm, in practice
If your firm does not work on public projects or for large developers, ISO 19650 can seem remote. It is not. It is the best free manual on getting organized that exists, and three things in it work even in a ten-person firm:
- A naming standard and a folder structure that are written down, not agreed verbally. That lives in the firm’s template, not in each architect’s head.
- File states. Even without a platform, you can separate what is work in progress from what has been shared and what has been published, and that solves most of the rework caused by the wrong version.
- Defining the purpose of the information before modeling. That is what stops the team detailing baseboards during concept design.
And if your firm serves, or wants to serve, clients that require compliance, the reading changes: the EIR will arrive, and somebody will have to answer it with a coherent BEP. A firm with no standard of its own answers that document with a promise it cannot keep.
Where to start
In the order that actually works:
- Read part 1 all the way through. It is concepts, and it is the short part.
- Look at how the firm names files and organizes folders today, and write down the standard you already use, flaws and all. You need to know where you are starting from.
- Pick one project and apply the four file states to it, even if only in the network folder.
- Only after that, think about a CDE platform. A tool with no agreed rules becomes one more place to lose files.
ISO 19650 will not make your firm more bureaucratic. It will make explicit what is implicit today, and it is the implicit that creates rework.
Frequently asked questions
Is ISO 19650 mandatory in Brazil?
Not on its own. A technical standard is not a law. It becomes mandatory when a contract or a public tender requires compliance, which is increasingly common in Brazil on public works and in contracts with large developers and contractors.
What is the difference between ISO 19650 and ABNT NBR ISO 19650?
It is the same standard. ABNT NBR ISO 19650 is the Brazilian version, translated and adopted by ABNT. Parts 1 and 2 were published in Portuguese in May 2022.
Do I need specific software to comply with ISO 19650?
No. The standard names no software and does not require a specific platform. What it does require is an agreed process, a naming standard, version control and information states. That can start in a well-organized network folder.
Does my firm need ISO 19650 certification?
Not in order to work to the standard. There are third-party certification schemes abroad, used mainly by large companies and by software vendors, but they are not a prerequisite for meeting a contract that cites the standard.
What is the difference between the EIR and the BEP?
The EIR is what the appointing party asks for. The BEP is how the team answers. One is a requirement, the other is a plan.
Is it worth studying the standard now, while it is under revision?
It is. The current editions remain valid and are the ones cited in contracts today. The revision reorganizes the structure, but it does not drop any of the core concepts.
Sources
- ISO 19650-1:2018, Concepts and principles, and ISO 19650-2:2018, Delivery phase of the assets.
- ABNT NBR ISO 19650-1:2022 and ABNT NBR ISO 19650-2:2022, published on 27 May 2022. CBIC, bulletin of changes to Brazilian technical standards (in Portuguese).
- DNIT, BIM technical requirements handbook (in Portuguese).
- Decree 10,306/2020 and Decree 9,983/2019, Estratégia BIM BR, Brazil’s national BIM strategy (in Portuguese).
- Opera Academy, ISO 19650 Updates, on the revision under way.
- Plan.One, From LOD to LOIN, on level of information need and EN 17412-1.
- Construction Management, BSI launches 19650 Kitemark.
Gabriela Zanin
Founder of Migra BIM
Gabriela Zanin is an architect and the founder of Migra BIM, a company working in Archicad implementation, training and consulting. She has taken part in BIM implementations at more than 200 architecture firms in Brazil and Portugal. Get to know Migra.
Published 9 Sep 2026 · Updated 9 Sep 2026
