Home Improvement Advice for Architects

International Classification System Do it Yourself Tips for Architects

To help specify materials, the Building Industry, uses a classification according to the CI/SfB system. The initials stand for 'Samarbetskomitten for Byggnadsfragor' the name of the Swedish committee which produced the original system and the CI stands for Construction Index.

If you look at the top right hand corner of any document connected with the Building Industry you will see a box divided horizontally and with four spaces in the upper section for trade literature. In any Building Library, documents and literature will be classified as follows.

The first box will be for the Physical Environment, which is mainly of interest at sketch scheme stage in the design of buildings, such as the different type of buildings and landscaping. This will be a number such as '81'. The '8' in this case refers to residential facilities and '1' to housing. If a church is being built, it will be '6' (religious facilities) and '3' for churches and chapels. Thus all information of Churches and Chapels will be index under '63'.

The second box is for the building elements, such as floors, roofs and walls (primary elements) and windows and doors (secondary elements). The figures in the box will be a number in brackets. Thus primary elements would be a (2-) number, roofs are (27), stairs are (24) etc.

The third box is for construction forms and materials consists of a letter either in capitals or in lower case. Capitals will denote a construction forms, lower case letters denote materials. For instance, if you want information on Rockwool insulation, it will be classified as 'Rm', where 'R' stands for rigid sheet work and 'm' for inorganic fibres.

The fourth box is for activities and requirements and contains literature on site operations, equipment, plant and anything else that does not form part of the finished building. It will be denoted by a capital letter, in brackets, with either a letter or number suffix.

A full description of the system and all the codes can be found in BRE Digest 172 from the Building Research Establishment.