BIM Information Requirements: the EIR under ISO 19650

ISO 19650 treats BIM as information management, not 3D modelling. The model is a by-product; the goal is the right information, delivered at the right time, to support decisions and to operate the asset. So before a project goes to tender, the appointing party decides what information it will need — and writes it down.

Those needs sit in a hierarchy. OIR (organizational), AIR (asset) and PIR (project) information requirements describe what the organization and the project need overall; the EIR is the appointment-specific slice handed to a delivery team. Get the EIR right and everything downstream — the execution plan, the models, the handover — has a clear target to hit.

An EIR is not a wish list. It defines, for each information deliverable, what is required, to which standard, in which format, by when, and how it will be accepted. It points to the methods and standards in force, the level of information need, and the rules of the common data environment that the project will run on.

The appointing party (the client) owns the EIR, usually with support from an advisor or an information management function. It is issued as part of procurement, so that prospective lead appointed parties can respond with a BIM Execution Plan that shows how they will meet it.

• Purpose and intended uses of the information (decisions, analysis, operation).
• Level of information need per deliverable — geometry and data, no more than required.
• Standards and methods: ISO 19650, any national annex, classification system, file formats.
• Common data environment: platform expectations, status codes, naming conventions.
• Milestones aligned to information delivery and key decision points.
• Acceptance criteria: how each deliverable is checked and approved.

The EIR is a question; the BIM Execution Plan (BEP) is the answer. The lead appointed party prepares it to show how the delivery team will meet the requirements. ISO 19650 splits it into two stages.

Together the EIR and the BEP form the contract for information: the client says what it needs, the team commits to how and when it will deliver. When this loop is explicit, scope disputes largely disappear.

A Common Data Environment (CDE) is the single source of truth for project information. The EIR sets the CDE requirements up front: which platform behaviours are expected, how information moves through it, and how it is named so that everyone finds the right version.

Information flows through defined states — Work in Progress → Shared → Published → Archived — with status codes and controlled access. Nothing is "the model on someone's laptop"; every deliverable has a state, an owner, and an audit trail.

A well-specified CDE is what turns a pile of files into information that is genuinely exchangeable, traceable, and auditable across the whole appointment.

ISO 19650 describes parties by their function in the appointment, not by job title.

Across these sits an information management function — often carried by people with titles like BIM Manager or BIM Coordinator. ISO 19650 cares about the function being covered, not the label on the business card.

ISO 19650 replaces blanket "LOD" targets with the Level of Information Need (LOIN): information is specified against its purpose, deliverable by deliverable. The question is never "how detailed?" but "detailed enough for what?".

Specifying the level of information need against purpose is how you avoid both over-modelling (expensive, slow) and under-modelling (useless at handover). It is one of the highest-leverage parts of a good EIR.