Component breakdowns are a vital multi-purpose tool and hence ubiquitous across a range of disciplines. Information systems need to be capable of storing reasonably accurate representations of these breakdowns. Most current information systems have been designed around specific breakdowns, without considering their general underlying formal structure. This is understandable, given the focus on devising the breakdown and that there is not a readily available formal structure to build upon. We make a step towards providing this structure here.

At the core of the notion of a component breakdown is the component as an integral (dependent) part of the composite whole. This leads to a rich formal structure, one that requires careful consideration to capture well enough to support the range of specific breakdowns. If one is not sufficiently aware of this structure, it is difficult to determine what is required to produce a reasonably accurate representation – in particular, one that is sufficiently accurate to support interoperability.

In this report, enabled by the Construction Innovation Hub, we describe this rich formal structure and develop a framework for assessing how well a data model (or ontology) has captured the main elements of the structure. This will enable people to both assess existing models as well as design new models. As a separate exercise, as an illustration, we develop a data model that captures these elements.

Associated with the notion of component (as an integral, dependent part) is the notion of replaceable part (see Appendix A for more details). We do not characterise this here but will do so in a later report.