Recent advances in the field of building performance simulation (BPS) have not only expanded the quantity of available tools but also widened their audience from the engineering professions to architects and planners. As the user pool expands and team efforts become more common, issues of standardization and exchange of simulation data have become critical for modelers.

Although significant efforts have been made in the development of formats for the exchange of geometry and weather data inputs for simulation, or full building energy models (gbXML, IFC), limited attention has been paid to the documentation and exchange of model inputs for building properties, such as material definitions or load profiles. The lack of a widely accepted file format for their comprehensive management becomes especially problematic in the case of rapid energy model generation during early schematic or urban design explorations, because it reduces the time available for design iterations and increases the risk of errors.

Supported by a survey of 150 BPS professionals about their current energy modeling workflows, this paper outlines a vision for a new energy modeling data framework based on the use of building properties (BP) templates as a standard input format through the design stages of a project. A proof of concept implementation of a BP template file format and a BP template editor tool are presented along with an example design simulation exercise.