The people building IFC met—and this time it was serious

On February 11 and 12, 2026, in Exton, Pennsylvania—Bentley headquarters, not the world’s most glamorous venue—the people who actually implement openBIM standards convened. Not to swap PowerPoint slides, but to get concrete: IFC 4.3 implementation gaps, IDS status, BCF updates, and above all: the next generation of the format, internally known as IFC X.

That’s the signal. IFC X is now an active project with breakout groups, structured input, and a direct channel to the bSI IFC X Core project team—no longer a future promise on a roadmap nobody reads.

←TODAY: IFC 4.3 struggles in practice with implementation gaps that a dedicated IFC Implementers Forum must address.
→3012: IFC X defines which building data remains readable at all—the format question becomes a power question.
Fulcrum: Whoever provides input to IFC X now writes the standard everyone will export to in twenty years.

Why IFC 4.3 still hurts

According to reports, the IFC 4.3 session was direct: participants named implementation problems outright, not wrapped in diplomatic language. The result: multiple dedicated IFC Implementers Forum meetings are now planned to close these exact gaps. Anyone regularly exporting bridges or infrastructure in IFC 4.3 knows the problem firsthand—the Alignment Element Model is powerful on paper and sometimes sluggish in practice.

In parallel, collaboration between bSI and ISO/CEN was aligned as the foundation for standards maintenance and future development—relevant for anyone in Switzerland, Germany, or Austria working with SIA, DIN, or EN references and wanting to know how IFC stays embedded in them.

What IFC X means in practice—and the window is now

IFC X is not IFC 5.0 with a new logo. It’s a structured rebuild that addresses weaknesses in the current schema architecture. The breakout groups in Exton identified priorities, named gaps, and developed improvement proposals—presented via show-and-tell on day two and passed directly to the Core project team. This isn’t committee theater; it’s the mechanism through which format decisions ultimately materialize in your Archicad or Revit version.

For your team: the windows for input are open, but time-limited. The next Implementers Assembly is at ACCA Software in Bagnoli Irpino, Italy—registration is open now.

Atelier: In PAZ projects with IFC delivery requirements—whether competitions, BEP, or model review—it’s worth looking at IDS (Information Delivery Specification) now. IDS is one of the standards whose status was discussed in Exton, and it’s the tool that makes IFC requirements machine-readable. Whoever writes IDS rules for a project today simultaneously learns the language in which IFC X will define delivery requirements in the future.

The honest trade-off

The Exton meeting was productive—but the protocol remains vague because bSI reports are generally vague. To know what was actually discussed, you have to watch the recordings and presentation materials on the dedicated bSI page yourself. Implementation standards are born in these rooms; whoever isn’t present there—physically or through contribution—simply takes on what others decided. It’s not a critique; it’s mechanics.

Go into the recordings. Bring a concrete IFC 4.3 pain point. And if your BIM manager ignores the next Assembly in Italy: send them this article. There are worse reasons for a trip to Campania.

Source: buildingSMART