In 2016 Wilkinson, Dumontier et al. published the FAIR Guiding Principles in Scientific Data (3, 160018): research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, with specific emphasis on machines finding and using it unaided. Research learned then that data no machine can read is data you pay to collect twice. Swiss construction now has its version.

On 15 September 2026 Bauen digital Schweiz / buildingSMART Switzerland (BdCH/bSCH) published the Handlungsempfehlung «Data Dictionaries»: 41 pages plus an Excel Strukturvorlage, carried together with SIA, CRB, SBV, Infra Suisse, IFMA Switzerland and IHS. The KBOB closing word, by Anna Wimmer, names the FAIR principles. Its core is one vocabulary: every object, property and value defined once, referenced to IFC 4.3.2.0 through the buildingSMART Data Dictionary (bSDD), governed and reused. Thirty-eight organisations support it, two architecture practices among them, and numerous experts whose names appear on no cover gave their knowledge.

Co-managing director Thomas Glättli names the problem (press release, our translation): “Digitalisation today does not fail for lack of data, but because information is often not comparable and not reusable.”

The recommendation cites a study by Dr. Pascal Sieber & Partners AG for armasuisse Immobilien and SBB (21 May 2026, twelve interviews). It found one storey with three names: Etage, Stockwerk, Geschoss. An anonymous planner told the authors: “every client wants it differently and we set everything up individually again and again.” An office on version 1.2 of a client catalogue, with the client on 1.4, sees the friction only at delivery. One interviewee estimates simple check rules could catch 80 % of today’s data problems. The study’s own line: harmonisation will come, with or without coordination; the window is open, and closing.

Our Archicad template already holds a small, ungoverned data dictionary: custom property sets, value lists, a classification column we fill because a client once asked. We map each client’s list by hand, and the mapping dies with the project. Four moves need no national body:

• Run the cascade. Check regulation, standard (SIA 416, eBKP-H), convention (KBOB), IFC’s Pset_ sets — only then add our own. Per the Handlungsempfehlung, most of what Hochbau offices add by habit already exists; landscape architecture is the honest exception.
• Name ours as ours. One office prefix (2–6 letters, capital first), an underscore, then a ScopeTopic in English; ASCII only (ae/oe/ue), no spaces, hyphens or tool names, never Pset_, Qto_ or CH_. The prefix states ownership: the office answers for that set.
• Status, date, source. Every entry carries a status, an ISO 8601 version date and its provenance; nothing is deleted, only deprecated. That separates a template from a dictionary.
• Ask which dictionary, which version at kick-off, and log the answer in the BIM-Abwicklungsplan (BAP) beside the LOIN table.

Competitions too: among the Flächenmanagement use cases on the BdCH/bSCH page are the Volumenstudie, the Raumprogramm (Soll-Ist) and the SIA 416 area table we rebuild for every Wettbewerb, now described as structured IFC information.

The source states its limits: the Excel is an entry aid, not a production system (a real dictionary lives in a versioned database), and the national steering body and binding CH_ level are still ahead. The trade-off is plain: every set we prefix is one we maintain long after the fee is spent.

←TODAY: Published 15 September 2026, Strukturvorlage final at v1.1.0, webinars announced «in Kürze».
→3012: An office’s property list is audited like its books, every word dated, sourced and owned.
Fulcrum: The prefix we type this week is the ownership record a machine reads decades from now.

Atelier: The BdCH/bSCH page calls the framework the basis for interoperability, automation and AI; no LLM drafting minutes can match Geschoss to Etage unless both words are defined somewhere it can read. Monday move: name one owner for the office property list, with authority to approve, rename and deprecate entries.

Hack: List the custom property sets in our template that break the naming rule. Export the template to IFC and run this illustrative snippet with IfcOpenShell, the open library Thomas Krijnen started; its regex simplifies the rule. Each printed name is a rename candidate, the smallest Archicad automation an office can own.

import ifcopenshell, re
m = ifcopenshell.open("office_template.ifc")
rule = re.compile(r"^[A-Z][A-Za-z]{1,5}_[A-Z][A-Za-z0-9]+$")
for n in sorted({p.Name or "" for p in m.by_type("IfcPropertySet")}):
    if not n.startswith("Pset_") and not rule.match(n): print("rename:", n)

PAZ Takeaway: The risk is model names drifting from list names. PAZ could help through tool development as a way of working: a small bridge built with the PAZ Grasshopper↔Archicad Library that reads the office property list from one table and checks each Archicad project’s property names against it.

Before the next project, enter your property list in the Strukturvorlage’s Properties, Values and GroupOfProperties tabs and rename your custom sets to the convention. At every kick-off, ask the client which dictionary and which version, and write it into the BAP.