COBie 2.4 · Project guide
Contact
Identifies the people and organizations referenced throughout the workbook.
Can every named responsibility be traced to a real project contact?
Why the Contact worksheet matters
Contact is the workbook's shared identity table. In COBie 2.4, each row identifies a person or company referenced elsewhere in the exchange, and the Email value is the primary key. That makes Contact more than an address book: it is the relationship backbone for identifying who supplied, created, reviewed, or owns information.
The CreatedBy field used throughout the workbook points back to a Contact email, giving each data row an accountable author. Other references can connect contacts to suppliers, warranty responsibilities, and issue ownership. If the Contact worksheet contains duplicate emails, placeholders, or abandoned project addresses, those relationships become harder to validate and maintain.
What belongs in a useful contact record
A useful record starts with a stable, well-formed email address and then adds enough organizational context to make that identity meaningful. Category describes the kind of business involved; Company, Department, and OrganizationCode describe where the contact sits; GivenName, FamilyName, Phone, and the address fields provide the supporting details needed by the receiving team. The COBie 2.4 publication identifies OmniClass Table 34 as the default business-category source when the contract does not specify another allowable list.
The goal is not to import every person who ever appeared in a project directory. Include the people and organizations that are actually referenced by the handover data or needed for operations, warranties, supply, review, and accountability. Agree early on how shared mailboxes, subcontractors, manufacturers, and owner representatives will be named so the workbook does not accumulate several records for the same real-world party.
Managing contacts in a model-backed workflow
Most Contact information does not come from Revit geometry. It usually comes from project administration, responsibility matrices, procurement and submittal records, commissioning information, and owner-maintained directories. A model-backed COBie workflow therefore needs a clear boundary between evidence extracted from Revit and identities maintained by the project team.
BIMRelay treats Contact emails as unique workbook identities and validates CreatedBy references against the Contact worksheet. Keeping those project-controlled records stable while model evidence is refreshed prevents a new extraction from creating duplicate parties or breaking authorship links. It also gives the team one place to correct an organization name or contact detail before the next COBie export.
Key relationships
Referenced by CreatedBy fields
Supports warranty and supplier information
Practical quality checks
- Use one stable email per contact
- Remove duplicates and inactive placeholders
- Keep organization names consistent
Contact worksheet FAQ
- What is the Contact worksheet in COBie 2.4?
- The Contact worksheet identifies the people and companies referenced elsewhere in a COBie workbook. It provides the shared identities used for authorship, supply, warranty, review, and responsibility relationships.
- Why is email important in the COBie Contact worksheet?
- Contact.Email is the primary key in COBie 2.4. A unique, stable email allows CreatedBy and other reference fields to point to one identifiable person or organization without relying on names that may be duplicated or spelled differently.
- Does Contact information usually come from Revit?
- Usually not. Contact information more often comes from project directories, responsibility matrices, procurement records, submittals, commissioning records, and owner-maintained contact lists.
- How does BIMRelay manage Contact references?
- BIMRelay treats Contact emails as unique workbook identities and checks that CreatedBy values reference an existing Contact row. This keeps authorship links valid while Revit-derived evidence is refreshed.
This is an independent practical summary, not a reproduction of the COBie specification. Refer to the official standard for normative definitions and field requirements.
Reviewed against the official NIBS COBie 2.4 publication and Annex A worksheet schemas.
Where the official documents, contract-issued workbook, and project validator differ, follow the contract requirements and accepted validation process.
Open the official COBie 2.4 publicationOpen the official COBie 2.4 Annex A worksheet schemas