CFIHOS, Capital Facilities Information HandOver Specification.
CFIHOS, the Capital Facilities Information HandOver Specification, is an industry standard that defines what engineering and asset information an owner-operator receives from its contractors at the end of a capital project, and in what structured form. Governed by IOGP, it sets a common data model so handover arrives as queryable data rather than a stack of PDFs and spreadsheets.
What CFIHOS, Capital Facilities Information HandOver Specification means.
CFIHOS exists because information handover on large capital projects has historically been inconsistent and expensive to reconcile. Each contractor delivered the instrument index, equipment list, line list, and datasheets in its own format, and the owner-operator spent months normalising it before the data could populate a maintenance system or a digital asset record. CFIHOS replaces that with a single specification. It publishes a reference data library of standard classes for equipment, instruments, lines, and documents, each with a defined set of properties, aligned with ISO 15926. An operator writes CFIHOS conformance into the contract, the contractor delivers handover data against the CFIHOS classes and property templates, and the data lands in the operator's systems without a separate translation project. CFIHOS does not replace ISA 5.1, KKS, or any tag convention. It governs the structure and completeness of the handover dataset, not the naming of the tags inside it.
What problem does CFIHOS solve.
On a capital project the same instrument appears on the P&ID, the instrument index, a datasheet, a loop diagram, and a cable schedule, often produced by different disciplines and different contractors. At handover the owner-operator has to merge all of it into one trustworthy asset record. Without a common specification that merge is manual, slow, and error-prone, and the gaps are not discovered until the maintenance system goes live with missing or contradictory tags. CFIHOS standardises the handover requirement up front so the dataset is complete and consistent by the time it is delivered.
What does CFIHOS standardise.
Three things. A reference data library of equipment and instrument classes with standard names, so a centrifugal pump or a pressure transmitter is described the same way on every project. A property template per class, so every instrument of a given type carries the same expected attributes. And a document and data model aligned with ISO 15926, so the structured rows and the documents that back them travel together. The specification covers what must be handed over and in what shape. It leaves the engineering content itself to the project standards.
How does CFIHOS relate to the instrument index and I/O list.
The instrument index, equipment list, and tag register are core CFIHOS handover documents. A CFIHOS-conformant instrument index is the same engineering document an instrument engineer already builds, populated to the property completeness CFIHOS expects and structured to its classes. The practical task on a project is mapping the data taken from the P&IDs and datasheets onto the CFIHOS classes and filling every required property. The closer the source data is to a clean, structured tag register, the smaller that mapping job becomes.
Who requires CFIHOS, and when.
CFIHOS adoption is led by major owner-operators in oil and gas, chemicals, and increasingly power and infrastructure, who write it into engineering and construction contracts. The handover happens at project close, but the data has to be built to the specification throughout detailed engineering, not assembled at the end. On operating plants the same discipline applies to every management-of-change package, so the asset record stays conformant through the life of the facility.
Common questions
What does CFIHOS stand for.
Who governs CFIHOS.
Is CFIHOS mandatory.
How does CFIHOS relate to ISO 15926.
What does CFIHOS mean for my instrument index.
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