Fire safety regulations impose very strict requirements on building design, especially for buildings built with combustible materials. It is believed that it is possible to improve the management of these regulations with a better integration of fire protection aspects in the building information modeling (BIM) approach. A new BIM-based domain is emerging, the automated code checking, with its growing number of dedicated approaches. However, only very few of these works have been dedicated to managing the compliance to fire safety regulations in timber buildings. In this paper, the applicability to fire safety in the Canadian context is studied by constituting and executing a complete method from the regulations text through code-checking construction to result analysis. A design science approach is used to propose a code-checking method with a detailed analysis of the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC) in order to obtain the required information. The method starts by retrieving information from the regulation text, leading to a compliance check of an architectural building model. Then, the method is tested on a set of fire safety regulations and validated on a building model from a real project. The selected fire safety rules set a solid basis for further development of checking rules for the field of fire safety. This study shows that the main challenges for rule checking are the modeling standards and the elements’ required levels of detail. The implementation of the method was successful for geometrical as well as non-geometrical requirements, although further work is needed for more advanced geometrical studies, such as sprinkler or fire dampers positioning.

4D modeling has been an applied research area for around two decades since the first seminal works in the nineties. In the last years, a number of case studies have been published both for demonstrating the various applications of 4D and for assessing technological propositions. However, in most papers only little place is given to the particular content of 4D models. In parallel, following the growing implementation of Building Information Modeling, 4D modeling process is usually recognized as a “BIM use”. In BIM implementations and protocols, the Level Of Development of datasets is a fundamental issue. This paper describes the application of two distinct “4D uses” conducted on a single pilot project. They aim to assess the levels of graphical and temporal details required for the implemented uses. The authors finally discuss the diversity of 4D uses with 4D models, both planned or ad-hoc, as well as the logical understanding related to 4D LOD.