Uniclass 2

NB Uniclass 2 has been renamed 'Uniclass 2015'.

Uniclass is a voluntary classification system for the construction industry that can be used for organising information throughout all aspects of the design and construction process, including; office management, project information, cost information, specifications, and so on. Adopting a standard classification facilitates interoperability between different systems.

Uniclass was created in 1997 by the Construction Project Information committee (CPIC), a pan-industry organisation with representatives from key industry institutes. The latest version of the original classification was Uniclass 1.4. However, it was criticised for not being genuinely unified, for inconsistencies between the labelling and depth of tables, for poor integration of civil engineering and building works and for being an essentially paper-based system.

As a result CPI developed a new version, Uniclass 2. CPIC stated that 'Uniclass 2 has been developed to produce a classification system for structuring information that is freely available for all participants throughout the life cycle of a project and beyond, which is endorsed by all construction and property bodies and professional institutions. It is dynamic, available online in various formats and managed by a team of experts who will monitor requests, update and control versioning.' (ref CPIC)

Uniclass 2 was made freely on the CPIC website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The mapping between Uniclass 1.4 and Uniclass 2 was:

Ac - Activities is new to both ISO 12006-2 and to Uniclass
Co - Complexes will replace parts of table D (Facilities)
Ee - Elements will replace table G (Elements)
En/EF - Entities will replace parts of table D (Facilities)
PP - Project Phases is new to both ISO 12006-2 and to Uniclass
Pr - Products will replace table L (Construction Products)
Sp - Spaces will replace parts of table D (Facilities)
Ss - Systems is new to both ISO 12006-2 and to Uniclass
Zz - CAD is new to both ISO 12006-2 and to Uniclass

NB Following feedback received about Uniclass 2, changes were made, and a new version, Uniclass 2015 released. The most significant change is the removal of the Work Results table.

NB The Common Arrangement of Work Sections (CAWS), a consistent arrangement for specifications and bills of quantities, also developed by CPIC was incorporated into Table J of Uniclass. However, the New Rules of Measurement (NRM2) has moved away from CAWS (which was adopted by its predecessor, the Standard Method of Measurement (SMM7)) and has adopted its own system of indexing.