Before anyone models, agree how the project is split into models and containers, who owns each one, and how they come back together. That split shapes naming, planning and coordination for the rest of the job.
A project is never modelled as one file by one person. It is split into many models and documents, produced by different teams, and brought together again to coordinate. The federation strategy is the agreement on how that split works. The information container breakdown structure turns it into the volumes, levels and types that every team uses to name and plan its work.
In a federated approach, the architect, the structural engineer and the MEP engineer each produce their own model and stay responsible for it. The models share a coordinate system, so they can be overlaid in a coordination tool. Nobody edits anyone else's model. See model federation for the general idea.
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