CFIHOS 2.0 Standard
EPC-to-Operations Handover Specification

CFIHOS = Capital Facilities Information Handover Specification. It is the international specification for EPC-to-operations data handover at the completion of a capital project. Maintained by USPI (Universal Plant Information Initiative), an industry consortium founded by Shell, BP, Equinor, Total, and other tier-1 owner-operators. CFIHOS sits on top of ISO 15926 Part 4 RDL and tightens the specification for the handover-specific scope: which classes, attributes, and relationships an asset register must contain when EPC contractor hands over to owner-operator.

CFIHOS 2.0 is the current major version, released by USPI in 2023 with ongoing point releases through 2026. CFIHOS 2.0 expanded the class library, refined mandatory attribute specifications, added new lifecycle relationships (e.g. equipment-replaces-equipment for revamps and brownfield), and improved the XML exchange schema. Backwards-compatible with CFIHOS 1.x for migration; new projects increasingly specify 2.0 directly.

USPI (Universal Plant Information Initiative), an industry consortium hosted in the Netherlands. Founding owner-operator members include Shell, BP, Equinor, Total, ExxonMobil, Chevron. Engineering tool vendors participate as technology members (AVEVA, Hexagon, Bentley, Siemens, SAP, Cognite). USPI maintains the CFIHOS specification through working groups; specification updates are published openly. Pathnovo participates in CFIHOS-aligned data exchange via output format support; broader USPI working-group participation is on the Pathnovo standards-engagement roadmap.

Voluntary at the standard level; increasingly mandatory at the project level. Tier-1 owner-operators (Shell, BP, Equinor, Total, Aramco, ADNOC) specify CFIHOS-compliant handover as a contractual requirement on major capex projects. EPC contractors that cannot deliver CFIHOS-compliant data are progressively excluded from tier-1 owner-operator bidding. Indian PSU operators (IOCL, BPCL, HPCL) are ramping CFIHOS adoption on capex programmes; expected to specify CFIHOS-aligned handover on tier-1 projects within the next 24-36 months.

Yes, native ingestion. AVEVA Connect cloud platform with AIM module ingests CFIHOS 2.0-compliant XML deliverables directly. AVEVA was a founding technology partner in CFIHOS development. For owner-operators on AVEVA AIM, CFIHOS-compliant handover from EPC contractors lands in AIM without manual mapping or remapping.

Yes. Hexagon HxGN SDx2 supports CFIHOS 2.0 ingestion alongside ISO 15926 Part 4 RDL native and DEXPI XML for P&ID exchange. Hexagon is a CFIHOS technology partner. For SmartPlant Foundation deployments, CFIHOS-compliant handover ingests via SDx2's data take-on schema.

Bentley iTwin Platform schemas natively support CFIHOS 2.0 mapping. iTwin Capture Operations (Bentley's brownfield digitisation product) ingests CFIHOS-compliant data feeds for asset model population. For EPC contractors using ProjectWise + iTwin during project delivery, CFIHOS-compliant handover lands directly in iTwin without intermediate translation.

Pathnovo's extraction output is CFIHOS 2.0 native by default. Extracted tags resolve to CFIHOS class library entries; attributes use CFIHOS-specified property names and units; relationships (equipment-on-line, instrument-belongs-to-equipment, equipment-has-datasheet) use CFIHOS-defined relationship classes. Output serialises as CFIHOS 2.0 XML for handover delivery, or as ISO 15926 Part 8 RDF / OWL for graph-database-backed AIM platforms. Conformance validated automatically against CFIHOS 2.0 schema before delivery; conformance report provided.