GOLDEN THREAD WORKSTREAM MEETING 3, 29-05-2025
GEORGE STEVENSON (shares screen). There’s a number of people who are new to what we’ve been doing, so I’m going to give a quick update on what we’ve been doing over the last couple of years. We can then have a discussion around the survey report. We’ve then got Matt Wilkie who’s a specialist in asset management, giving some practical examples of why we need a Golden Thread. Then Paul Oakley is going to explain some of the tools that we’ve been creating to help to improve the quality of digital handover. We then want to talk about the Golden Thread Taskforce.
Many of you have already joined up to the Taskforce, but obviously there’s an opportunity if you wish to participate actively in what we think heeds to be done, then there is an opportunity for you to do so. And given that’s the case, what would you like to do? Would you like to be a mentor? Or somebody that’s learning? Clearly we’re all learning all of the time. Or maybe you're a client or a contractor and you want advice. So, what we want to try and do is just understand if people want to be active in the Taskforce, what do you want to do? And then we’ve got dedicated Taskforce meetings scheduled coming up in June.
One of the things I just wanted to give you as a background, we’ve been engaged with the whole Golden Thread stuff since the start. And that’s a comment that I got last year from MHCLG which I think is really helpful to sort of encourage people. And just last week I got this from Tim Galloway, saying that we’re on the right path. So, just to let you know it’s not just a talking shop. This is an example of one of the resources that we’ve got, it’s a Miro board that the group have set up for people to engage in this and ask questions. Because everybody is interpreting the regulations slightly differently and we feel that collectively we can get there more easily if everybody is on the same page.
So, you can sign up to the Miro board. If you want to be part of that put in the chat ‘Miro board’ and we’ll send you the link. Just to explain BIM4Housing, if you’ve not been involved with it. We took over about 5 years ago and we’ve broken it up into, rather than being about 3D modelling, it’s about better information management. And we’ve got groups that have been looking at ways that we can improve the flow of information through the design, construction and operations process by creating certain resources. And we’ve done that through putting together subject matter experts.
We were asked to join and support the Golden Thread Initiative and we’ve run dozens of workshops with hundreds of people involved. Actually people who many of them are competitors, sitting around tables, or in most cases it’s been on Teams, sharing knowledge and sharing expertise which we capture in publications. This is all voluntary, everybody is doing this voluntarily, but the information is there if you’re interested in downloading it. And the sort of quality of information, it’s real deep dive stuff. So for example on fire doors, we’ve got a breakdown of not just what the fire door is, but what it’s doing, what risk is it mitigating.
What do people do to fire doors to stop them from working and also what information is required. And we then went on to produce a standardised fire door inspection manual. Which again we had 60 or 70 people who are fire door experts contributing to this. And we’re now doing the same for fire dampers and fire stopping. So, this is all good stuff that we think places us in a good situation to reduce delays. So, how are we actually doing with that? Well, what’s interesting is that we’ve done some audits on projects where the quality of handover information hasn’t been great. We’re checking against the criteria that is in Regulation 38, for example.
We’re identifying on a project, this is one project, you can see how much is missing at handover. So, all of that work that everybody has been putting in, it’s not being realised in some ways. And part of the reason for that is because the way that information is still being presented isn’t in a useable machine-readable way. A human can read that document, albeit, this was in the handover information, you can see here that there’s still a lot of stuff that is still questioned. So, no smoke seal, or that should be a 60-minute not a 30-minute. And that sort of thing doesn’t really help when we get that in O&M information.
What we really need is for it to be machine-readable. So that, for example, rather than being on a spreadsheet, it ought to be in a form that we can tie together electronically. So that you don’t have to then look at a drawing, for example, and then work out what the reference key is on it. All of that information is being produced by computer, so we really should aI think as a standard encourage people to provide it in a machine-readable format. And similarly, one of our experts here Cliff Kneale did a presentation at the last forum meeting which I’d really urge you to go and look at because it’s a real master class.
But here, for example, he’s illustrating how on this drawing you’ve got a reflected ceiling plan. And because of the information there’s an exit sign there, but you can’t actually see it because it’s obscured, and these are the sorts of things that we think it could be picked up when people are doing audits. And we should be pushing back to the supply chain saying that we shouldn’t be accepting that because otherwise how do you know that you've got the right information. We ran a poll at the last forum meeting and it was quite informative.
For example, one of the challenges that we’ve got is that everybody in this room I think probably is keen to improve the quality of information at handover. The fact that you’ve committed an hour to get involved in this now, and you’ve spent many hours previously, indicates that you’re bothered, that you want to see some improvements. But in many case you’re constrained within your organisation by the fact that senior management, perhaps, don’t understand and perceive the importance of it. Or other organisations that you have to engage with, they also don’t understand the value.
So we asked this question and I think it was really quite telling that 89% felt that senior management were not fully aware of their duties under the new legislation and therefore the importance of the Golden Thread. We also asked how confident people are that they’re going to get the right fire safety information at handover. And that’s even worse, 92% said they didn’t believe that they would get it, which I think is a wakeup call. And I think probably a reason why a lot of the submissions are being turned down at Gateway 2.
We’ve then got the question of do we think the contents of the fire & emergency file, which is the ongoing responsibility for keeping it up-to-date. 43% didn’t believe that their organisations were doing that. And in terms of O&M information which is where a lot of this information is often held, 72% felt that they weren’t keeping stuff up-to-date. Which is no massive surprise to anybody in the industry. We also thought well, a logical time to check to see if the fife & emergency file is fit for purpose should be when a fire risk assessment is done. So we asked that question, should the fire risk assessment include checking the fire & emergency file? And 95% said that it should.
It would be interesting to know if you’ve had fire risk assessments whether that is actually in the scope of what you’re asking people to do because certainly in the feedback that I’ve had is that there is often a race to the bottom in terms of tendering for fire risk assessments. And therefore people that are carrying them out, who probably won it on a competitive tender, may not have the time to actually do that work. So, that’s something that we ought to be trying to raise the bar, that’s our thinking. And should the fire & emergency file include a floor plan with the locations of the safety critical assets?
Now, that may seem obvious but I think it’s very, very common that people don’t have that floor plan with things like fire dampers, smoke dampers, fire doors and fire stopping indicated on them. Should there be a schedule of the safety critical assets and what products are installed? Again, 82% said yes, they should, but I’d be interested to see whether that’s actually the case. I think you as a community could perhaps check that. We then had a couple of questions about the regulations. So, do you need to inform the Regulator when a fire door is replaced? I know this is a widely discussed topic, but actually the answer to that we found was yes, you do need to inform the Regulator.
But 55% of people don’t think that that was necessary. I’m not an expert in this at all, but the people that are the experts say that you do need to inform the Regulator. All be it, perhaps, retrospectively. And another interesting one was how frequently should AOVs be tested to ensure that they’re operational? And we had a wide range of responses to that as you can see. And only 20% of the people got that right. iI would be interesting to know whether you know what that was. In fact actually on that one, do you want to put in the chat what you think it is. Should it be 6-monthly, 3-monthly, 1-monthly?
If you’re a responsible person or you’re involved at all with AOVs or smoke vents, how frequently should we check to make sure that they’re working? And the n finally do we believe that a third-party should be looking, an impartial person be looking at the safety critical information before a Gateway? So that you can check to make sure that what you’re putting forward to the Regulator is not going to get picked up. Has anybody got any comments at all on the poll? Do you think that it’s been useful for us to do that?
HOWARD HALL George, I think it’s quite astounding how BIM4housing and the forum that’s been created is having to fill the gaps from the lack of guidance from elsewhere.
GEORGE STEVENSON Matt Wilkie, are you ready to give us a couple of observations?
MATT WILKIE (shares screen). This one is where is the front door. Which sounds a bit silly, but what you have in large clinical buildings is they have automatic doors in the East, the West, North and South. But what you’ll have is the receptionist at whatever door will say the front door. So, when you start getting issues with the door, you may have one door that’s faulty but because they get reported as different doors you’re assuming that you’ve got multiple door issues, when if you just replaced the one door all of your callouts, repairs would suddenly just disappear overnight.
And sometimes it’s actually just simple things like the wind is actually blowing through the building effecting the door actually working. So, because you don’t know which door is which it is quite a regular occurrence problem and a costly one if it’s not managed. And actually understanding which door is which, because obviously if you’ve got different contractors attending, they’re going to spend time looking for a door, they assume that they’ve fixed the right door. And then they get a call back saying the door is not working and it’s a completely different door. So, it’s important that they’re tagged correctly, but also that people actually understand the layout of the building.
So when you go north, south, east, west the help desk don’t know the difference what that means. It needs to be specific to that door that is recognised at site level, the help desk level and a contractor level. Which is why things like barcoding and tagging is used for the same as having updated drawings with this specific location so that you know not every door is the same door. It sounds quite simple, but you wouldn’t believe how much this actually costs, it’s phenomenal.
And this one is where is the door? What I’m finding is that a lot of the guys asked to do the fire door surveys, they can be internal engineers, they can be specialist contractors, they often aren’t given the drawings. So, one of the problems that you get is when the door is originally specified they come from an architect’s viewpoint. So, they just want an FD30 with a specific style, design whatever. It’s not quoting the manufacturer and it’s not quoting what is going to be ending up there. What you get is like FD30 the basics, but once it starts going from build those numbers don’t change on the drawing.
So for example there 1F D2 is not actually a fire door, it’s actually first floor, door 2. But these are the sort of things that you get with naming conventions as well because people will change things. But the important thing is the original drawings have got the exact locations, already with the drawing numbers on it and everything should carry through on that as the Golden Thread. That you get your specifications from the manufacturer, confirm it back to the architect so that the doors are actually where they should be. Align the two, so now you’ve got everything from the hinges to the intumescent strips, to the d-handles, whatever is on the door.
PIERRE VENTER The first thing that we’re living in a digital world and one of the things is that you need some basic rules. It’s like a GA plan, if you turn it upside down and shake it whatever falls out shouldn’t have been in the GA plan. In the same way, the door numbering, the door identification, actually should be identical across the entire spectrum, from the white van to the big Tier 1 contractor. Simply because that same Tier 1 contractor is also going to subcontract stuff out. And so it’s a cascade in two ways to sort it out.
I do find all to often is that we just have allayed too many different standards. And if we start international and come down eventually to the practice, the practice should be picking up all of the previous standards, so filtering it out. Just making it far more deliberate, far more consistent.
MATT WILKIE I was getting on to that point, I haven’t got that far yet. I was just explaining the problem first.
ANA MATIC I just wanted to say for example for our residential projects, we work on doors to so much detail that I don’t think that the issue is generally in naming. I think the issue is more to do with handing over information that is actually then slightly stripped back to what’s essential for the maintenance. So, when you’re at that point when you’re handing over the door schedule to the manufacturer, to the supplier, the architectural door schedule will already have so many categories that are describing the door. And then the manufacturer will take it on and they will make it even more detailed.
So, there is no lack of data at that point in time. What happens afterwards is what doesn’t get done very carefully, I’m seeing in practice. Which is doors that are at that point hugely populated with information, those doors then need to be stripped back to an essential amount of information that is important to the user, to the maintenance person, to those who will be looking at the door later on. So, it’s not a lack of information, it’s somebody needs to be involved who knows what needs to be stripped away.
Because you don’t need every single bit of information from the ironmongery company, from the access company. There’s many people working on a door, it’s not just one company. And the architects will capture that in a kind of design way and the manufacturers will capture that in their own way as a kind of fabrication level of detail.
MATT WILKIE I’ll just finish because I only got halfway through. My point being is that you get a fire door specialist come in and they’re often not given the drawings, so they don’t have the drawing numbers. So, they then start doing 1-200, so that no longer correlates to the building because they’ve used a different numbering system. And I’m finding that quite common that then you get another contractor in who then uses a different system because they weren’t given the last set of details either. And then you’ve got a problem with the audit trail as well.
So, the reason that I was bringing up from taking it from construction is that we have so much information at the beginning, but it sort of starts getting watered down as people stop using the drawing numbers that correlate it back to the original. Because the advantage that you’ve got if it correlates where it’s a unified numbering system, like what you’re saying if you’ve got too much data, you still know that it’s door 21. So the bits that you want, it’s still door 21. So you can filter out just the pieces that you need, but other people may still want to know what the size of a d-handle is and the specification because they want to change say 50 in the building.
But you may not be interested in that, you may only be interested in the fire safety etc. The whole point is the Golden Thread starts at the beginning of the specification. Then it’s on to what’s actually installed and then trying to keep it maintained, so you keep the numbers the same from the beginning you can correlate it all of the way back. And that’s what I was trying to say, that’s where the Golden Thread starts. Like you saying, you get too much information, that’s correct as well. But if you’ve still got all of the information you can select the bits that you want because it’s still door 21. You may need it all, but you still know where door 21 in is.
PHIL THOMPSON I’ll just take you up on where the Golden Thread starts because I would suggest that it starts with the manufacturer.
MATT WILKIE Um, but the specification of what should be there started with the architect.
PHIL THOMPSON But what information does the architect use in order to identify the correct product from the manufacturer?
MATT WILKIE Well, for example, it will be fairly basic, like where’s an FD30, and FD60 or whatever. The point is that classification is sitting on that drawing. So you actually want to keep it there because you want to re-verify from once it goes to the manufacturer, you want to reverify thats’ it’s actually installed and that’s’ what was put there. So, it all ties back to what the original specification for the building was.
PHIL THOMPSON Yeah, but we’ve also got to consider that some specifications would almost specify an outright standard product off of the shelf. Let’s assume that it’s an electrical isolator that’s available now, it’s on the shelf now. Are we not missing a trick by not tying it back through an ID to the manufacturer item?
MATT WILKIE Well, you’ve still got the original location of everything from when it was at the design stage. So, I think it’d be still to keep it where it started, you can still update it with a manufacturer’s information because if it’s wrong for some reason, like it’s underrated or whatever, you want to go back to the original build that put the wrong thing in.
PHIL THOMPSON And what about, say we have an example where there is a product recall.
MATT WILKIE That’s why you still need the manufacturer’s detail, but it’s still tied in. You don’t lose one, you keep both, it’s just keeping them together.
PHIL THOMPSON Yeah, I just think that the language that we use around this is important and we should stress that where possible and where practical, we should be using manufacturer identifiers. Otherwise then you create a gap between, you assume that you start at design stage, you don’t, you start at manufacturers. The product is already there available and it’s been marketed into the industry. We should be using those as well as against products like door sets, for example, which are manufactured specifically for a project.
GEORGE STEVENSON Can I just jump in on that because absolutely, I understand what you’re saying Phil. The point that Matt’s making which I really strongly agree with is we’re confusing there the difference between an asset and a product. The asset is going to be there for the next 50 years because they need a door. And that door is a door that will then need to be maintained. So, there needs to be a door, even it is replaced with a different product 3 or 4 times during the life of that asset.
So, I think just picking up on what Ana was saying, the challenge that we’ve said right from the start is that we need as much information as each of the different stakeholders needs to consume to do things properly. But by creating it in a machine-readable form we can switch off the levels of detail that we don’t need. So therefore the different stakeholders can get that filtered back information, but we don’t lose it and that’s really important.
PHIL THOMPSON Yeah, but I think again the distinction is important that a product becomes an asset. So, the Golden Thread starts with the product and then it becomes the asset. And if we don’t capture that as part of this, the language that we’re using…
GEORGE STEVENSON No, Phil, that’s fundamentally not right. The Golden Thread starts with the performance of the thing that needs to do the job. It’s then satisfied by a manufacturer’s product.
PHIL THOMPSON Not in all cases. The reality is that it’s done the other way, that’s what I’m trying to stress. A lot of items are purchased not based on performance, they’re based on price and availability. And I’m not talking about complex products sometimes, things that are technical or are under a safety criteria. I’m just talking about mundane items that just have a lifecycle and need replacing and maintaining.
PAUL OAKLEY Actually it starts with the requirements from the clients which are then generally satisfied by a designer defining a specification against those requirements. But what we’ve missed out is the difference between components and types because mapping types, particularly to manufacturer’s models, is a way that things should map across and be more consistent. So, it’s having the instance in terms of mapped to a particular type and then the type will then generally refer to a manufacturer product.
And if you can basically make sure that your types are as close to the manufacturer product information, it’s much easier to deal with that mapping.
GEORGE STEVENSON OK, we’ll park that now if we may. Paul, could you run through the digital handover piece?
PAUL OAKLEY (shares screen). So, this is a repeat of what I did at the other presentation. This is a significant construction project with all of the BIM experts involved in terms of award winning BIM contractors, information management consultants, all following ISO 19650 and producing COBie. And they’re all supposed to be experts in terms of the delivery of this. But the reality was that they followed the typical sort of Autodesk methodology of the architects produce one Revit file, although it was three separate buildings. And so each discipline then did one Revit file and put the whole lot together.
So, there was absolutely no understanding that actually these are three buildings and actually three different facilities. So, having one COBie file, one zip was handed over with all of the documentation and no metadata in terms of attributes about the documentation that was provided. So they didn’t consider how the buildings were going to be managed, operated, used etc, as part of their handover to the asset management team. The other big thing was they handed over basically a record of the construction project. They did not hand over the documentation needed to maintain and operate the building.
There were 17,000 files that were handed over, including a thousand concrete test tube results. Plus loads of other information about piling and other things which was not really relevant to asset management, but would be required as part of a record of the building. As part of the handed over information was two chunks of stuff. There was project specific documentation, a lot of the design documentation, drawing files etc. was named as ISO19650, using the BS options. But then there was lots of other construction documentation that was handed over that actually did not have any proper naming conventions.
And then we had all of the other information, the generic industry information such as manufacturer’s trade literature, all of the certificates etc. which basically did not follow any standard naming conventions. And therefore really fell out of being able to document and deal with that within the sort of standard folder structures etc. Again, they replicated folders throughout. So, they created a building 1, building 2, building 3 under fabric and then the architects also had a building 1, 2, 3 in electrical. So, there was multiple levels of building 1, 2, 3, then maybe 3-4 levels which basically created excessive folder paths.
And caused issues in terms of I could only unzip it to a single character folder in my root because otherwise I blew the 256 character limit. Within the work packages, they used the subcontractors name to identify the work packages. And it wasn’t just the fact that the folders used those, even the O&M file itself just had ProjectName_O&M. pdf. And even when you opened that PDF, on the front cover it didn’t give you the name of the work package. So actually finding specific work package information was a real problem. Within the zips, as it come out of a standard CDE solutions, it concatenated the ISO19650 identifier, the description, status, and the revision.
But things like status have things like A5 suitable for RIBA Stage 5 approval, 35 additional characters which are not really needed as part of the string. So again, this caused all sort of problems in terms of the naming issues. And because they concatenated things like the descriptions, the descriptions within the CDE use things like commas and alpha sans etc. So when we tried to re-zip things up to put them up to solutions, they were illegal characters. So basically the zips failed and wouldn’t allow us to deal with stuff like that, so we had to do quite a bit of renaming of things to deal with it.
So, instead of just basically getting a selection of documents and putting them into the asset management solution, we had this whole process of really having to go through everything, breaking it down into the three separate facilities in terms of buildings 1, 2, 3. We had to rename the folders, so based on the actual packages. Fortunately within the main contractor’s O&M he had provided a list of the package contractors and the packages that they were working on, so at least then we could do the mapping and pass those things over.
But to help us deal with this, we wrote little routines to basically go through the zip files, extract all of the documentation in each of the different folders into a massive big Excel file, which we could then use to manipulate in the files and extract metadata out of them. So we were able to, part of it would have an old name and a new name so we know what the old name was, we’re going to record that as an attribute. And then we’re going to rename it, get rid of the special characters and reducing things like the suitability codes etc.
We also used a series of pick lists so we could decompose the ISO19650 naming, so we knew that -A- was going to be architecture if it had an A. From that we knew which building because ZXX001 was building 1, 04 was the 4th floor etc., DR was a drawing, AAA was the name of the company. So, from all of these we could basically extract attributes that we could then put into the system to hold against each of the documents and deal with them that way. And then also we could find a typical description from where that’s sort of set within the file name.
And also from the file extension we could work out the type, again from a pick list we could then populate those as additional attributes. So, it allowed us to go through those. Certain things like the legal owners, from the names that were covered we could do that from the second field and pick lists. But sometimes we had to go back on the other documentation and look at the original folder name in terms of what it was from there. If we’d have had a document issue sheet, obviously a lot of this information would have been available for us.
Or even COBIe, if there had been a document sheet with COBIe, a lot of the information in terms of the descriptions, the name of the file, who it’s created by, those sorts of things would have made it a lot easier for doing a lot of these stuff. But these were not included as part of it. The form of information, a lot of elements was certificate CE. But actually there are so many certificates that get handed over that having it identified as a certificate is pretty useless. So actually we realised that the PM table from Uniclass 2015 actually had quite a detailed breakdown of the types of certificates and other documentation that we would use.
So, by using that we could get down to specific types of certificates which actually allowed us to filter the information much more efficiently to be able to find the sort of stuff that we’re looking at. So, obviously I think that the whole issue on this is there is a massive cost in terms of the ongoing maintenance finding information. It’s been raised throughout the last century in terms of the issues with design & construction, but also in asset management, that finding the most up-to-date current information is always the problem.
So, the amount of time and effort that we spend constructing things, we really need to make sure that we handover the right information with sufficient metadata so that people can use it and find it. We can do the sort of exercise that we’re doing, but really it’s all about reducing time and finding the information. Providing that trust in it. Again, originally we had multiple versions of documents and different revisions and things like this, which shouldn’t be handed over to the asset management team, they just want the latest up-to-date.
And also capturing things like the history and audit trail of things which may hold some other specific information as the sort of stuff that we’ve dealt with it. So, it’s been a bit of a whirlwind, but it would be much better if this was handed over correct in the first place and we weren’t needing to do the sort of exercises we are on projects.
GEORGE STEVENSON So, as far as this is concerned, what we want to do is identify anybody within this group, and obviously we’ve already got people that have signed up for the Golden Thread Taskforce. If you’re interested in what Paul’s just been through there, if you could put your ‘digital handover’ into the chat then we can include you in that process. And really what we’re now doing is folding the digital handover into the Golden Thread Taskforce, because what we want to do is identify people that actually want to be active in this process and manage that process through.
Have we got people that are interested in actively engaging? If you’ve already put your name down for the Golden Thread Taskforce you don’t need to do it again. But if you’re interested in being part of the Taskforce and perhaps tapping in to some of the tools that Paul has just shown you, then please do so. What I’m going to do is to help people understand what we’re trying to do in terms of the Taskforce. (shares screen).
Essentially what we’ve got is a situation where, you’ve probably seen this and some of you are probably involved in projects that are being held up, but a lot of these projects are being held up at Gateway 2 because of missing or flawed information. And I got this last week where 50% of the projects were rejected because they didn’t have the right fire safety information, which is quite a staggering statistic in today’s world. And obviously we’ve also got a situation where it’s not uncommon for asset management organisations to have to survey brand new buildings to produce an asset list to maintain, which I think is quite telling as well.
And there’s a lot of real strong work that’s been going on to try and put classification and standardisation against things. But we’re still having the problems that Paul was indicating there. And part of the reason for it is that we’re still not following the basics. So, this is an old graphic, but it’s what fundamentally everybody should be working to. This is how COBie is operating. And the point is, rather than wait until the end there should be staged checks to see if the information that’s needed is actually being provided. And that needs to be a progressive validation.
So, what we are trying to do is follow that through. So, the principle that we’re promoting is the Golden Thread. And it can mean lots of things to different people, but the consistent thing is that the building and all of the systems in it need to be considered as a single system. And it’s also the fact that the parts of the building and the components need to work together. Many of you will have seen this before, but I think it’s still worth reiterating, that the purpose of it is a fire breaks out in a kitchen, it’s generating smoke. How do we protect the people that are in the stairwell, the common areas, from being suffocated?
And there’s a number of different ways that’s done. We’ve got compartmentation, so there is a range of different component elements that need to go to make up that compartmentation. So, the fire walls themselves are made up of lots of different elements. So therefore it’s not just whether the fire doors are good, it’s whether all of the elements in that wall are good. And therefore what we need to be doing is making it so that the some control systems can kick in, detection and signage. So, the whole point about the Golden Thread is all of those things needs to be working together.
And when we’re doing audits of handover information we need all of that information to be located properly so that we can know where, for example, a fire door is. But also what the product is, which is the point that Phil was making, and also what spaces it’s protecting. So, the Golden Thread is there to really bring together a whole range of different things. So, if people are doing inspections using various different software applications, and this is the point that Matt was making earlier, it needs to refer back to that unique asset. Because otherwise we’ve got no way of managing things.
Therefore the legislation, this is from Regulation 38, it actually says that there should be an as-built plan that shows where all of those assets are. And the Regulator recognised that that was possibly going to be a challenge, so even in normal standard buildings now the responsible person has to sign a legal declaration to say that they’ve had all of the information that they need to operate the building safely. Now, how many clients, how many contractors are aware of the fact they have to do that?
So, an example of that is the detail that’s needed is here, so for example if the fire causes the ductwork to collapse, it’s important to know where all of the fire dampers are, so that you can check to make sure that they’ve got a breakaway joint. Otherwise it can pull the smoke damper out of the wall. And this is just one example of how that can be done, really quite effectively. I think this is a combination of different software applications that are acting together to provide that Golden Thread. So, we’ve got the Revit model, we’ve got a schedule of all of the assets. We’ve got the manufacturer’s product details here, so you can drill into that and see which.
The important thing about this is that we can find very low cost ways of capturing that information. So, 360 photos, for example, it doesn’t need the model to be completed with all of the detailed information. A 360 photo can do it and that means it’s so much easier to be able to navigate around it and it can be kept up-to-date. So, the Golden Thread isn’t just about design and construction at all, it’s about the life of the building and being able to connect together all of the documentation that’s needed. That isn’t about what software is being used by the way, it’s about the interoperation and the connection, as Paul was saying earlier, making sure that people have used the right classification and the right connections between the different data sets.
I’m going to stop there now and hand back over to see if people are interested. The Golden Thread group that we’ve got now, these are the resources that we’re putting together to explain to people, for example, the government standards that we can follow. And also to do check lists that we can follow as well. The overall objective is to have a team of people who are sufficiently interested in this process to be able to do audits, if you’re interested in doing that, on a paid basis. And the intention is that we’re going to be able to award a Golden Thread aware badge, as it were, to people that have demonstrated that they’re interested.
RICHARD FREER So if anybody is interested in getting involved with the Golden Thread Taskforce, it’s kind of ancillary adjacent to the work that the Golden Thread group is doing, But it’s rather more focused on, we’re calling it aware, but it’s a level of achievement, of knowledge. As George said, there are opportunities in there for actually getting paid for some work as well, so if anybody is interested put ‘Taskforce’ in the chat and we’ll get you invited for the upcoming meetings in June, I think the first one is June the 12th.
GEORGE STEVENSON Also, if people are working on projects where they’re concerned about the risk, it seems to be a big risk of a rejection by the BSR, then maybe flag that up as well. Because you could be a client or a contractor that’s actually concerned about what do you need to do, where are the gaps? We could do a spot check audit, or the team could do a spot check audit to see whether what you’ve got at the moment is up for that.
MANDEEP SINGH This Taskforce stuff is really central to what the legislation is looking at in terms of the finding of the gaps. There’s one example where I’ve done that was for a really large housing association where they were about to purchase the building, So, it wasn’t nothing to do with the Gateways actually. And what we did was analyse the information to see what was there and what was potentially missing. And over a several weeks process we’ve found quite a few things are missing. So, the housing association actually walked away from the purchase of that building.
But obviously this is becoming a lot more important now with the kind of building regulations extension period where defective work can be bought up or reopened up for up to 10 years. Previously I think that was just a 2-year period. And I think it was Matt who mentioned earlier that this kind of information of the Golden Thread can be kind of drawn up in different kind of cases down the line.
There is a court case ruling as well, earlier this week I believe it was, where a designer which had been bought out by AECOM had some design work which was not up to scratch and about 10 years later they found issues. So the court had ruled that AECOM were now liable because under Section 51, I think it’s Regulation 130, parent companies can be found liable as well now. And the obligation can be transferred under the Building Safety Act for parent companies.
GEORGE STEVENSON Mandeep, I think that’s’ a really, really important point because I was at UKREiiF last week and there was a lot of discussion about this, you can imagine can’t you? Because people are becoming very concerned about the delays. But actually the delays, certainly from what we’ve been told by the Regulator, a lot of the delays are down to the fact that people just haven’t provided the information that they’re supposed to provide.
MANDEEP SINGH Yeah exactly, it’s getting more and more important, like I say the building regulations defect period has extended 10 years. The Defective Premises Act is extended to 15 years from 6 years. And I’ve just shared that link to the article which talked about the kind of legacy defect claims, the designer that was responsible. Structural engineer URS that had been acquired by AECOM, I think the company is going after them now and the courts have ruled that’s a legitimate kind of way to reclaim the funds.
GEORGE STEVENSON The interesting thing with that is again when I was talking to people, a common comment is yeah, when was the last time that anybody was prosecuted? And that’s a very common sort of observation. But I think actually it’s a bit false because yeah, it may be that the HSE may not actually prosecute you, yet, but they’ve got 10 years. So if you’ve got a project where either maybe one of your other projects becomes under scrutiny. They then start to look at your others, then you’ve got a problem.
The second thing is that this is a corporate responsibility, so therefore arguably you should declare it to you insurers and your shareholders that you’re carrying a risk. One final thing is that from what I understand, when a building is acquired the person that takes it on takes on the liability for the incomplete information. So, the fire and emergency file, for example, I appreciate that’s quite a narrow thing because building safety is about structure as well. But let’s say just the fire & emergency file, which is quite easy to audit, if that information isn’t adequate or isn’t correct, then that’s something that’s a real no brainer.
MANDEEP SINGH Yeah, just on that, particularly fire & emergency files, when I was at Hydro I was requested by clients to actually do a gap analysis on the fire & emergency file as well. So, people are kind of waking up to that. But when I did talk to a law firm, it was Watson, Farley & Williams, we did a little seminar there. And they said that the thing is it’s not just an emerging issue with kind of faulty buildings now, its buildings which have been built by somebody and then say that contractor has been bought out, then that contractor will become liable for the buildings that that contractor had initially built in the past.
So, there’s the liability when you’re a purchasing contractor, there’s a liability when you’re purchasing portfolios of buildings because any of those buildings could have missing information regarding the Golden Thread and have a defect. And then there’s liability when you’re purchasing design teams, like we’ve just seen in that court case hearing as well. So, the liability is just massive.
GEORGE STEVENSON One of the things that I just wanted to finish with is one of the big challenges is that the regulations can be interpreted in lots of ways by lots of different people. And what we’re trying to do within the Taskforce is actually we’ve got the thick end of 80 or so people who are heavily involved in this. And they are in a good position to actually say what good looks like. So, if we can say what good looks like, and also establish a process that a landlord or a contractor can go through to try and verify that they’ve got the right information, then it means that there is an industry best practice to work to.
So that’s what we’re asking, whether you would be interested in getting involved in because that’s what we want to have a team of people who can both specify that, and also have a common way of interpreting it. The Miro board helps us with the contractual side of things, but from a data management perspective, if we can say this is the information that we need to know about a smoke vent. This is the information we need to know where it is, who installed it, we need to know the manufacturer’s model number and details. Some basic things that we can then follow. Because in my experience, going through O&Ms doesn’t provide you with the information in a very clear way.
And that’s not a comment about the people that have compiled the O&Ms, it’s actually down to the fact that installation contractors probably aren’t aware of what they really should be providing. Because there is no consistency in terms of what information they need to follow. They’re told to follow 19650 which is great, but the detail of what information do we need to have about a smoke damper or a fire door isn’t clear. And therefore we’re in a position as a collective to actually determine that. So, if you want to be involved in it please come along to the first proper meeting that we’ve got which is on the 12th of June.
JUSTIN GILLARD I think there’s a message with regards to what people receive. Basically from an information manager’s point of view, you get what you receive, so please ask for what you need and people like me will facilitate it.
GEORGE STEVENSON Most defiantly, thank you, Justin.
RICHARD FREER Yeah, it’s about everybody needs to be a bit proactive, not just sit waiting for it.
JUSTIN GILLARD Yes, I put it in slightly joking terms that if you’re preparing for a banquet you don’t get a stranger to go and buy the ingredients for you. Because it’s a huge undertaking that people are doing here and it’s incredibly important that it’s done properly. Because there are consequences for what actually happens. So, it’s excellent what’s being done in this group by actually defining what is a good set of information.
CHAT
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 11:08 am
It would be good if the golden thread principles could be used within the CDM deployment of H&S files across several sectors
matt wilkie (External) 11:17 am
I think the fire door question replacement falls under building control. As I have always asked building control to confirm they are happy.
Chris Bicknell (Unverified) 11:25 am
Always issue ALL the data and don't shorten for ease!!!
Gareth Grimes (External) 11:27 am
The client/asset manager should decide what the asset labelling for their asset register surely? this is then shared with the project/design team
Joe Stott (External) 11:27 am
Strikes me that there is a desire to leverage the drawings produced within the design process beyond the construction phase and into operation. The issue being that these drawings are not produced for this purpose hence why we see all these issues. Is there a scope for the production of an alternative set of drawings/schedules etc that are specifically designed to be used for operation?
Chris Bicknell (Unverified) 11:27 am
Need to agree at outset a comprehensive naming convention and issue to ALL and future parties. Aligned to the asset classification. Anyone can filter but not invent if not there. The golden thread basis!!!
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 11:28 am
Does the industry advocate the use of Unique Asset Identifiers (UAID) that align with the asset and eliminate confusion.
Dan O'Gorman (External) 11:28 am
GSS1 has developed a "Minimal Viable Product" (MVP) "Show and Tell" fire door assembly E2E track and trace solution. It even shows how a scan of the packaging of the replacement part will be flagged if that Barcode GUID is not listed in the IFC approve "Bill of Materials" This is the link https://gs1ie.app/riba/riba.html
Warren Scott (External) 11:28 am
Would Geo Tagging the doors not solve this?
Gareth Grimes (External) 11:28 am
Everything should starts with the Fire Strategy
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 11:29 am
I think the Golden thread starts with the client to establish the employer's information requirements
Chris Bicknell (Unverified) 11:30 am
Need to embed the operational use data in the design - it's not a subsequent exercise - as FM we used to spend over £100k reinventing the issued data into something we could use. Better to spend half that on getting it right or at least the framework for later entry if design team don't complete.
Dan O'Gorman (External) 11:32 am
In the context of Products Phil is 100% correct as QA and Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) must be part of the "Golden Thread".
Joe Stott (External) 11:32 am
In that case i think we agree that this is an addiional requirement / scope to the ones we are typically engaged in as architects. This needs to be within the EIR documentation from day 1 to ensure the delivery team are aware of the requirements and that it is costed for.
Andy Cumberpatch (External) 11:32 am
Does the golden thread not start at building conception?
Hall, Howard (External) 11:32 am
Having used ActivePlan and augmented the automated Cobie asset information pull through with 360 pano's to identify additional individual assets, you can attach/tag with unique naming convention and the products actual specification details. Clear for review and operational FM delivery. This demonstrates an ongoing Golden Thread.
Justin Gillard (External) 11:33 am
And it starts with legislation
MASSEY, Ian (Unverified) 11:34 am
Using 'COBie' & 'BS 8644-1:2022'(Digital management of fire safety information) along with extra Fire attributes as required for BSA is a great starting point for this flow from Design Spec to Manufacturer to handover
Chris Bicknell (Unverified) 11:34 am
The designer will specify the 'asset' type IE door - which will have a specification to be satisfied by a product. So initial scope is the 'thing' and detail becomes a product.
Justin Gillard (External) 11:36 am
The EIR is where this outcome is shaped and spurious information ideally not included
matt wilkie (External) 11:36 am
I got 30,000 files for a large medical facility from build with multiple versions all kindly following no numbering system or naming convention to easily understand the information. So not only was it a case of splitting everything out, but also multiple versions of the same thing and nothing confirmed as installed or as built.
Joe Stott (External) 11:38 am
Architects bloody love folders within folder...
Matt Hodges-Long (Unverified) 11:38 am
Significant technical evidence is now required by Asset Managers (many years down the line) to evidence arguments made in the Safety Case. In most cases this information cannot be found or is buried within reams of paper documentation. I would urge all to consider that everything may be required at some point by someone
matt wilkie (External) 11:38 am
Even as simple as evidence of a timeline.
BOOTH, Paul (HUMBER TEACHING NHS FOUNDATION TRUST) (Unverified) 11:39 am
It's quite fascinating to me the number of different understandings in this group, of the starting point of the Golden Thread.
Victoria Finn (External) 11:39 am
Surely when we asset tag fire doors, we should then ensure that this reference is used throughout. did put hand up but was taken down each time
matt wilkie (External) 11:40 am
Should maintain from the original door numbers from plan. So it's tied with the build.
Victoria Finn (External) 11:40 am
can you do this on a QR code?
Justin Gillard (External) 11:41 am
If you do not receive what you need, it must be asked for and defined in the EIR protocol for the project. You are responsible for requesting what you need for operations
MASSEY, Ian (Unverified) 11:41 am
Main Issue is there is not a sufficient industry standard O&M/data handover template for this & clients do not detail handover requirements in a detailed enough manner upon main contract signature.
Matt Hodges-Long (Unverified) 11:41 am
Complex for a new build, absolute nightmare to create retrospectively for the 13,000 HRBs currently in occupation which is where most of my professional time is spent.
matt wilkie (External) 11:42 am
Part of that is to cover defects etc. also anything that has been altered to maintain the data. As even removed assets should still have its information confirmed and maintained (why it was removed, when, and compliance).
Justin Gillard (External) 11:42 am
If you let a stranger do your shopping, you won't be able to cook a banquet
matt wilkie (External) 11:42 am
Totally agree and gives an opportunity to inject templates.
Pierre Venter (External) 11:43 am
GUID for all elements, Component and assemblies. Unique from the start, for clear identification with small parameter set to do this. The Unique ID, is the reference, with location permits the replacement, cross-grade, up-grade, replacement all trackable.
This ensures the QR can be added on day 1. The "Performance Spec" is crucial to the digital comparison of the Product option by the Contractor. On-demand and Online for visual and digital compliance checking. Important for sanity.
matt wilkie (External) 11:44 am
Exactly so if done in build stage the numbering would be that of the original numbers so QR would work well.
Chris Bicknell (Unverified) 11:44 am
Sometimes the procurement client is not the end user client so differing data needs - need to understand that at outset if say developer client for onward ownership
Matt Hodges-Long (Unverified) 11:45 am
Not sure I agree that previous versions shouldn't be handed over to asset management team. The Golden Thread is handed over and previous versions must be part of that
Bayliss, Kevin (Unverified) 11:45 am
Normally, the status is an option attribute for tracking on CDE and not part for the document name, this may help.
But agreed the challenged is aligning the standards in Iso 19650 etc with what supply chain and trades systems. its stated in secondary guidance on Golden Thread released last august by CLC stated
What information is required for the (ongoing) Golden Thread maintenance, and documents that relate to structure and fire.
What other information about the building that is of value to the accountable person that is required but not necessarily in the Golden Thread..
Standardisation will be great supported by review of the above with the AP for the above on any HRB.
matt wilkie (External) 11:45 am
Always want all versions as it often lets you understand changes etc.
Philip Hannabuss (External) 11:47 am
I would question, did not have it or could not find it ?
Dimitrios Theodorou (External) 11:48 am
Standardising requirements with IDS
Dimitrios Theodorou (External) 11:51 am
BIM4AM could generate a dictionary under bSDD where all requirements are standardised according to HRB and the used to generate Requirements in IDS
Parsing Machine readable requirements in multiple files agnostically across systems
Bayliss, Kevin (Unverified) 11:54 am
I'm involved with a couple of clients that will required golden thread that I'm helping to lead, some HRB and some non-HRB, so be happy to be actively involve in the Golden Thread Task force.
Gareth Grimes (External) 11:57 am
I also have several CPDs I can share re: gateways 2 & 3 including several handouts on simplifying things
Mandeep Singh (External) 11:59 am