Recently, a lively professional debate has emerged within the BIM community regarding different approaches to ISO 19650 certifications. We believe it is important to ground this dialogue in professional standards and clearly resolve any misunderstandings.
First and foremost, we would like to emphasize: ISO 19650 certificates issued by BSI represent significant professional recognition, and organizations holding such a certificate can be rightfully proud. These certificates prove that a given organization is capable of applying BIM-based information management according to the ISO 19650 standard at the project or activity level, within defined frameworks and projects. This in itself is a major step forward in domestic BIM maturity.
The root of the current professional misunderstandings is not whether an ISO 19650 certification “exists” or “does not exist,” but rather what kind of certification we are talking about and at what organizational level it is interpreted.
The UNI/PdR 74 Approach vs. Project-Level Certification
The approach represented by AFMTEC Services Ltd., introduced for the first time in Hungary, is built upon the UNI/PdR 74 guideline. This is not an alternative to ISO 19650; rather, it is an ISO 19650-based compliance and certification framework at the corporate management system level.
The essence of the difference is as follows:
- BSI-type certifications typically focus on the project, process, or application level.
- Compliance according to UNI/PdR 74 examines and audits a BIM information management system that spans the entire organization.
This means that UNI/PdR 74 does not simply ask, “Is the organization capable of working in BIM on a given project?” Instead, it asks, “Does the organization’s entire operation—its policies, processes, system of responsibilities, decision-making mechanisms, and controls—operate according to BIM-based information management?”
It is important to highlight:
- A BSI certification is not “lesser.”
- UNI/PdR 74 does not “override” it.
- Rather, it represents the next level of maturity.
A Logical Evolution in BIM Maturity
In practice, this means that a project- or product-level ISO 19650 compliance is an excellent foundation upon which corporate-level, management system-based compliance can later be built. This developmental path is not a contradiction, but a logical evolution.
AFMTEC’s goal is not to question existing certifications, but to further develop the domestic BIM culture and ensure that organizations ready to take the next step can achieve internationally recognized, management system-level BIM compliance. This opportunity has just become available in Hungary for the first time with the introduction of the UNI/PdR 74 framework.
We trust that this post will contribute to clarifying the professional dialogue and help the industry understand: we are not talking about competing solutions, but rather about levels of BIM maturity that build upon one another.
