“The NBIMS Committee (the National Building Information Model Standard Project Committee), is a project of the National Institute for Building Sciences (NIBS) buildingSMARTalliance™. Originally chartered in 2005 under the Facility Information Council (FIC) the NBIMS Committee was re-chartered as an Alliance project in 2008 in order to consolidate missions and streamline services. From 1992 to 2008 the FIC mission was to “improve the performance of facilities over their full life-cycle by fostering common and open standards and an integrated life-cycle information model for the A/E/C & FM industry.” Although FIC was sunsetted in 2008 its mission continues under the governance of the Alliance. The NBIMS Committee continues this tradition by knitting together the broadest and deepest constituency ever assembled for the purpose of establishing and managing through an Industry consensus process a series of open source National standards and guidance for all aspects of Building Information Modeling. The NBIMS Charter (PDF) spells out the Committee’s vision and describes the results NBIMS expects to achieve.”

http://www.buildingsmartalliance.org/index.php/nbims/forum/forum.php?id=13