Product Data Template
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[edit] What is a Product Data Template?
A Product Data Template is a common data structure defining the ‘properties’ (essential and non-essential product characteristics such as fire rating and colour) that describe any type of product in a way that can be traced to a credible source.
Such credible sources are product standards declaring the performance characteristics of products and the methods they should be tested against. There is a specific hierarchy of credible data sources taken into account in the PDT structure. Legal data sources such as European Harmonised standards are given greater priority than national standards which have greater priority than industry and user recognised requirements (like BREEAM or COBie).
This is how Product Data Templates are created to serve as a common framework for anyone to use to manage construction product related data.
Product Data Templates are especially useful for manufacturers who can populate them with the most up-to-date and accurate information about their products. Once complete, this populated template is called a Product Data Sheet (PDS).
[edit] Who develops the methodology for creating PDTs?
International standardisation bodies CEN and ISO are developing a series of standards to cover the methodology for creating Product Data Templates. As these standards are planned to be officially published by the beginning of 2019, companies currently develop Product Data Templates based on a general European construction industry consensus and the draft standards currently in development by the CEN technical committee 442, Work group 4 looking at product dictionaries and templates.
NB The Code for Construction Product Information, Version 1.0, published by CCPI in September 2021 defines a Product Data Templates (PDT) as: ‘A structured collection of properties that describe a specific product or product type.’
It defines a Product Data Sheets (PDS) as a populated PDT.
[edit] Data templates
Digitisation for construction product manufacturers: a plain language guide, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in 2021 states: ‘A data template is a subset of properties about a construction object. Once a data template is agreed upon for a product, it allows information about any similar products to be compared and shared as machine readable data, and by translation through a user interface (for example, a web page), by a human being. It’s worth noting that the term “product data template (PDT)” is no longer defined in the standards. Data templates apply to products, systems and assemblies etc.’
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