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A Modular Reference Architecture for MCP-Servers Enabling Agentic BIM Interaction

Tobias Heimig-Elschner, Changyu Du, Anna Scheuvens, André Borrmann, Jakob Beetz

TL;DR

This paper tackles the fragmentation of MCP-based BIM server implementations by proposing a modular, API-agnostic reference architecture that decouples the MCP interface from BIM backends via explicit adapter contracts. It justifies the design with a Design Science Research approach, implementing a prototype around an IfcOpenShell backend and validating the concept through artefact-centric, scenario-based evaluation. The key contributions include a three-entry-point architecture (MCP, viewer, bucket), a sandboxed BIM execution service with a strict adapter contract, and a ReAct-style interaction loop that supports reproducible multi-step reasoning with backend-agnostic operations. The work demonstrates feasibility for reliable, reusable agentic BIM workflows and outlines practical extensions such as validating remaining capabilities, enabling parallelism, and testing with non-open-source BIM tools, offering a foundation for systematic, cross-environment BIM research and tool interoperation.

Abstract

Agentic workflows driven by large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied to Building Information Modelling (BIM), enabling natural-language retrieval, modification and generation of IFC models. Recent work has begun adopting the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP) as a uniform tool-calling interface for LLMs, simplifying the agent side of BIM interaction. While MCP standardises how LLMs invoke tools, current BIM-side implementations are still authoring tool-specific and ad hoc, limiting reuse, evaluation, and workflow portability across environments. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a modular reference architecture for MCP servers that enables API-agnostic, isolated and reproducible agentic BIM interactions. From a systematic analysis of recurring capabilities in recent literature, we derive a core set of requirements. These inform a microservice architecture centred on an explicit adapter contract that decouples the MCP interface from specific BIM-APIs. A prototype implementation using IfcOpenShell demonstrates feasibility across common modification and generation tasks. Evaluation across representative scenarios shows that the architecture enables reliable workflows, reduces coupling, and provides a reusable foundation for systematic research.

A Modular Reference Architecture for MCP-Servers Enabling Agentic BIM Interaction

TL;DR

This paper tackles the fragmentation of MCP-based BIM server implementations by proposing a modular, API-agnostic reference architecture that decouples the MCP interface from BIM backends via explicit adapter contracts. It justifies the design with a Design Science Research approach, implementing a prototype around an IfcOpenShell backend and validating the concept through artefact-centric, scenario-based evaluation. The key contributions include a three-entry-point architecture (MCP, viewer, bucket), a sandboxed BIM execution service with a strict adapter contract, and a ReAct-style interaction loop that supports reproducible multi-step reasoning with backend-agnostic operations. The work demonstrates feasibility for reliable, reusable agentic BIM workflows and outlines practical extensions such as validating remaining capabilities, enabling parallelism, and testing with non-open-source BIM tools, offering a foundation for systematic, cross-environment BIM research and tool interoperation.

Abstract

Agentic workflows driven by large language models (LLMs) are increasingly applied to Building Information Modelling (BIM), enabling natural-language retrieval, modification and generation of IFC models. Recent work has begun adopting the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP) as a uniform tool-calling interface for LLMs, simplifying the agent side of BIM interaction. While MCP standardises how LLMs invoke tools, current BIM-side implementations are still authoring tool-specific and ad hoc, limiting reuse, evaluation, and workflow portability across environments. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a modular reference architecture for MCP servers that enables API-agnostic, isolated and reproducible agentic BIM interactions. From a systematic analysis of recurring capabilities in recent literature, we derive a core set of requirements. These inform a microservice architecture centred on an explicit adapter contract that decouples the MCP interface from specific BIM-APIs. A prototype implementation using IfcOpenShell demonstrates feasibility across common modification and generation tasks. Evaluation across representative scenarios shows that the architecture enables reliable workflows, reduces coupling, and provides a reusable foundation for systematic research.
Paper Structure (24 sections, 9 figures, 7 tables)

This paper contains 24 sections, 9 figures, 7 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. State of the Art
  3. Agentic BIM & LLM Workflows
  4. The Model Context Protocol and its application in agentic BIM
  5. Methodology
  6. Research questions and design
  7. Architectural Design Principles
  8. Reference Architecture
  9. Problem Identification: Common core capabilities and tools
  10. Solution Design: Architecture Overview
  11. BIM execution isolation
  12. Interaction and Execution Model
  13. MCP Tool Hierarchy
  14. Implementation
  15. Evaluation
  16. ...and 9 more sections

Figures (9)

  • Figure 1: Conceptual visualization of the container microservice architecture.
  • Figure 2: Representative resulting models from evaluated test cases
  • Figure 3: Conceptual interaction flow between the agent, MCP server, and BIM Execution Service.
  • Figure :
  • Figure :
  • ...and 4 more figures