What are the risks of vendor lock-in for engineering firms and asset owners, and how do open standards help?
When one or two software vendors dominate a market and an organisation's data is stored in their proprietary format, that organisation faces serious exposure: if the vendor goes bankrupt, discontinues the product, or exploits its monopoly position to raise prices, that data becomes inaccessible or prohibitively expensive to migrate. Open standards like IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) eliminate this dependency by ensuring data remains readable regardless of the software used — an IFC file can still be opened 30 years from now without requiring any specific software version.
This is not a theoretical concern. buildingSMART International was actually founded in the late 1990s by software vendors who came together precisely to enable information sharing across tools — recognising early on that a fragmented, proprietary landscape served no one well in the long run. The organisation now has 40 chapters worldwide as of 2025, and standards like IFC, IDS (Information Delivery Specification), and BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) have become foundational to how structured data moves across design, construction, and asset management workflows. You can hear Eric Bugeja explain this directly on the Digital Construction Podcast.
"AI systems are only as good as the data that they are trained on. If our information environments are fragmented and inconsistent and ungoverned, then AI doesn't solve that problem. It actually scales it."
— Eric Bugeja, buildingSMART Australasia & buildingSMART International
Bugeja's point extends beyond vendor risk: the argument for open standards is also an argument for data quality and longevity. Proprietary lock-in and unstructured data are two sides of the same fragility. When structured, governed data sits in open formats, it not only protects asset owners from commercial dependency — it also creates the reliable information environment that makes emerging technologies like AI genuinely useful rather than amplifying the noise.
About Eric Bugeja
Eric Bugeja
Chairperson, buildingSMART Australasia · Director, buildingSMART International · Founder, Kefron
Eric Bugeja began his career as a mechanical engineer in a two-person company alongside a highly experienced Dutch engineer in his 60s — an unusually open environment that gave him the freedom to explore emerging design technologies from the very start. That early exposure shaped a career-long instinct for identifying where technology could drive real efficiency gains: he completed a 3D design task in two days that had been budgeted for two weeks, an early signal of the productivity shifts that structured digital tools would eventually bring to the broader industry. After moving through manufacturing automation and food processing consultancy, Bugeja transitioned into BIM leadership roles at large design and construction firms, where he was responsible for digital strategy and driving structured data adoption at scale. He now runs Kefron, his own consulting and training business, while volunteering as Chairperson of buildingSMART Australasia and serving as a Director on the board of buildingSMART International. His work focuses on open standards advocacy, technology adoption, and building the global community of practitioners who depend on interoperable data to deliver and manage built assets. This combination of hands-on engineering experience and standards leadership makes him a credible and authoritative voice on why proprietary lock-in is a genuine operational risk — not just a theoretical one.
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Bugeja began as a mechanical engineer in manufacturing automation and food processing consultancy, where his passion for adapting technology to real-world problems led him to transition into BIM leadership roles at large design and construction firms, developing digital strategy and driving structured data adoption across multidisciplinary teams.
buildingSMART International is a global industry association that develops open standards — such as IFC, IDS, and BCF — enabling information to be shared across different software platforms and throughout the full lifecycle of built assets. With 40 chapters worldwide as of 2025, the organisation was originally formed in the late 1990s by software vendors who recognised the need for interoperability.