FIRE CRITICAL WORKSTREAM MEETING 31-07-2025
GEORGE STEVENSON I’m particularly pleased that people like Alan and Andy have joined because you were involved in the very early project for capturing the asset information. I’ll give people a quick update as to what we did originally. We started this journey 5 years ago with BIM4Housing which is still very active, we’ve got development group meetings and things like that happening at the moment. But then we decided last year to create BIM In Asset Management because one of the things that we found was most difficult was actually finding out from asset managers what information they really needed. We were providing a lot of information, but how much of it was actually being consumed and, more importantly, how much of it was being kept up-to-date.
So, we’ve been running BIM In Asset Management for about 15 months now and regularly we’re getting 150-200 people attending the monthly meetings. And that’s the banner under which we’re doing this. Just to explain BIM4Housing, we’ve got number of different working groups which meet every couple of months. And what we do is try and tackle what information could make jobs easier for different people. So in other words, how could construction’s tasks be made easier if the development teams gave them different or better information? And similarly, how could operations teams function more effectively if they got better information from construction? And also from manufacturers.
So we set up a series of workstreams and this is the methodology that we’re operating still. These are task and finish workstreams. So, the idea is that we just have maybe 3 or 4 meetings on something, or maybe 2 meetings, to look at things like standardised information requirements, data templates. Also looking at classification and things like that. Safety critical assets is a key area, that’s really what we want to be talking about today. Also looking at carbon and data libraries and things like that. So, we were then asked by the MHCLG to work with L&Q on something called the Golden Thread Initiative. And we were tasked with providing the asset information requirements, also for surveys, to be able to work through this.
And we had a series of workshops, largely on Teams, but that group there are all manufacturers, that’s Will Perkins from SE Controls. We’ve then got designers, we’ve got operations people. And the beauty of this is that they’re all from different organisations, in some cases competitors, but they sit around the table and they collaborate so that we can then collectively come up with some better solutions. And now within BIM In Asset Management we’ve got a Golden Thread Taskforce where we’ve got people who are knowledgeable about the Golden Thread and in principle what we’re trying to do is get them to become the Golden Thread Aware Group, so that they can inform supply chains in terms of what information is needed, but do so in a collective way.
Because one of the challenges with all of the regulations, and also with guidance and standards, is everybody can interpret them slightly differently. And that causes chaos down the supply chain because if Notting Hill Genesis are asking for different information than Peabody are, that’s a problem to the supply chains. So, what we’re trying to do is draw those things together so we can come up with something standardised and consistent. Which the government and the Building Safety Regulator will never do because they don’t want to be prescriptive. But we as a community can say what good looks like, which is what I’m trying to do with the safety critical asset group.
The other thing that’s important is that from an asset management point of view, people manage buildings in systems. They manage assets in systems, but they need information to be grouped into systems. And unfortunately the way BIM modelling works often that information isn’t grouped together in systems. And contractors will often let the works by work package which then may or may not identify an individual system. So, we need better understanding from the manufacturers, and also asset managers, as to what type of assets go in which systems because that’s an important area. What we’re looking for is to also look at this from a point of view of regulations because one of the big drivers is making sure that things are easily findable.
Particularly with the new Gateways, but not just that, this is for building control. And one thing that’s become very clear to me over the last couple of years is how few organisations have information about the right fire safety information. So, Regulation 38 of building regs seems to me to be one of the clearer ones where they actually say that you need information on some specific asset types. And what we’re basically doing is providing a way that the information can be audited by client organisations when they’re receiving information from a handover perspective. Not just new build, but on an ongoing basis they should be holding the information about what the asset types are for things like AOVs and sprinkler systems. The individual asset IDs, the locations, what system or circuit things are in, the manufacturer’s product information.
Ideally I would like that to be in a machine-readable format and a standardised format that we can use, but quite frankly that seems a bit of a big ask at the moment. So, the baseline should be that you’ve at least got the product reference and the data sheet for it, even if that’s a PDF. We want to know the installer’s name, if it’s appropriate the commissioner’s name, the inspector’s name and then, moving on from that, who’s maintaining it. So, those are things that we think are important. And then when we’ve gone through things we’ve realised that actually a lot of these assets have got sub-assets. For example, an AOV might have a smoke detector, it might have actuators, and therefore these in themselves we need the information on as well. So, that’s principally what we’ve been doing.
What is key is understanding that asset teams need different information. So, you might have somebody that’s carrying out repairs and small works. They will need a certain level of detail that is perhaps more that the compliance team. But the compliance team possibly just needs to know that there’s a proper certificate there. The asset team, they’re probably going to be more involved in life cycle replacement in many cases, so they also need to get information on condition. And safety managers would need different information again. So, what I’m trying to do today is to see if we can identify some people who are willing to become asset type champions. And maybe several people could be, I was talking with Stephen Gore this morning who’s an expert in dampers.
And if he can pull together a few people that are similarly knowledgeable, either from a manufacturer’s perspective or an installer’s perspective, then we can then build out the knowledge. I’m going to ask Stephen to repeat some of the things that he said to me this morning, because it’s tremendous. So, if you’re interested in being a champion because you’re knowledgeable about a particular topic, if you put ‘champion’ into the chat that would be useful. Because then we come back and explain to you what we’re actually trying to achieve from that. We’re really just trying to raise the bar and make it so, this won’t be an onerous thing, it will be basically reviewing some of the work that people like Alan, Andy and Stephen contributed to a couple of years ago.
Just to explain what that was, when we were talking to people about fire doors, for example, we’d talk to asset teams and they didn’t really know how to articulate what it was that they actually needed to know about AOVs or cavity barriers or fire dampers. And therefore we ran a series of workshops where we got people to actually tell us that they knew about a particular asset type and what information they believed was needed for different purposes. So, when I say for different purposes, here for example, this is…the component parts that go to make up a fire door. Because it might be that you supply a tested fire door, over the next 20 years there’s going to be a need to replace some of those component parts. And therefore we need to identify what they are.
We started by saying what risk does a particular asset mitigate. The purpose of that was driven by the Regulator because the HSE were involved in what we were doing. Also, what do people do to a fire door to stop it from being operational? And that was really helpful. For example, apart from propping things open and maybe the door closer being disconnected or something like that, there’s also things like painting over it that I certainly didn’t understand was an issue. And that’s where that knowledge comes in. Also, what information do we need to know about the specification? And also drilling down in to construction detail, gap tolerances, installation details, what the accredited groups are.
And I don’t think anybody’s been down to this level of detail on those asset types and they were very, very grateful for this. This is widely available, you can see this anytime on the BIM4Housing website. We’ve also done more things. This is more recently, we’ve had over 100 people inputed to this which is standardising the way that fire door inspections should be run, with examples. We’re just issuing now one on fire dampers and fire stopping. So, that’s the sort of quality of information that we’re putting together. And then as far as the BIM In Asset Management group is concerned, the Golden Thread group, what we’re trying to do is make it so that we can understand how individual assets can work as systems. So, that’s part of the Golden Thread process that we’re operating. And to say that these component elements all need to be able to work together and be able to then see that in a joined up way.
So for example, it’s all down to maybe a fire breaks out in the kitchen there, it’s generating smoke. And one of the key things is to stop it from getting into that stairwell. And the means to do that, there’s a range of different measures that are in place. Compartmentation is probably one of the key elements and therefore you’ve got a series of things that go to make up the compartment. And the fact that the fire doors may be perfect, unless the penetration seals are working properly and the dampers are working properly, then to an extent you may as well of not bothered. You also need to make sure that the smoke control system is going to work and the detection system and the signage systems are all operational.
And to achieve that, what we need to be able to do from an asset management perspective is bring together the specialist information that, for example, is being done with fire doors and then connecting that back to product information. But also looking at that from a point of view of where is that asset in the building and what spaces is it protecting? And do so in such a way that that asset, not product but the asset, because that door is going to be there for the next 20-50 years. The product itself may be replaced, or some of the component parts of it may be replaced, but the asset that’s performing that role isn’t. And therefore if people are doing inspections using a range of different software applications, we need to make sure that they are collecting that information together in a coordinated way so that we’ve got that.
I’m going to stop there and just open up to the discussion to see whether people agree with what we’\re trying to do. Stephen, would you mind just giving a bit of a summary of what we discussed this morning in terms of the need for maybe a control system for example?
STEPHEN GORE I think there was probably about three things that we spoke about and controls was one of them. And I think they’re possibly an example of what you spoke about a minute ago with systems crossing over. Because typically whilst some people may run a fire damper back to a fire alarm panel, they’re generally better suited running from a damper control panel that will take an input from the fire alarm system. If it’s a smoke control system then it needs its own smoke control system to go through all of those components. So, there’s always that risk at that point with the BIM assets that there’s some form of crossover and things get missed.
I think that the two other things that we spoke about, George, which was around assets and certainly in older builders, our tech support team it’s quite common that we will get an email with a photograph of a damper with someone saying I need a spare part for this, what is it? And at this point that facilities person knows that it’s a damper, but doesn’t know if it’s a fire damper, a smoke control damper. Doesn’t know who’s made it, doesn’t know when it was fitted. And there’s on online catalogue for this where you can up and look a damper up that was made 23 years ago. So, we rely on internal expertise where we have people that might have been in the industry for 20-plus years, to actually have some recollection of it looks like it was made by so and so manufacturer.
Or it may be one of ours or it might not be. If it’s not one of ours, but we can identify it, we’ll always try and help someone identify it. We’re not getting a sale out of that because they’re not necessarily asking to replace it, they’re just trying to find out where they get asset information from about that type of product. Which then does kind of lead into the other bit that we spoke about which is a challenge a bit for us. Which is when we do either recognise a damper and it looks like it’s one of ours, or someone might come on to us and say we’re inspecting a building that was handed over 18 years ago and trying to determine the asset information. And nothing has been passed over as part of Regulation 38.
And we have archive material, it’s all there, but it’s not available online. And we generally don’t do that because most of our customers struggle with the material available that’s online and understanding it. So, to put on legacy data from 35 years will cause a few challenges. And it can take time to go through that, it’s not a half hour job. I’ve had one engineer of mine spend 15 hours doing it and there’s no sale that comes off of the back of that. They’re not replacing the dampers, they’re just trying to look at what they’ve got and check it against what should have been fitted at the time. And from I suppose a commercial aspect to our business that runs the risk that it starts becoming quite difficult to justify having people spending hours and hours of time working on something that’s got no commercial value to us. In this instance we were able to justify it because it was a customer that we work with on lots of other projects, but that’s not always the case.
GEORGE STEVENSON Andy, the point about the fire alarm system, for example, and the control system, that’s an area that you’ve got a lot of expertise in. Could I draw you in to the conversation on that?
ANDY SCOTT Well, you can, my recollection of the work that we did was that I provided an overview of the components of a fire alarm system. I don’t think that there’s been very much done since then on fire alarm systems themselves, not that I’ve been involved in.
GEORGE STEVENSON No, so what happened, we did the initial work back in 2021 and then we had a refresh of it in 2023 which was really just a sanity check. And now what we want to do is to revisit those. I’m not talking about starting from scratch again. The quality and depth of information that we got there, like I say certainly from what I’ve been told, is second to none. What we now need to do is to look at that just to do a sanity check on it to make sure there’s nothing in there that maybe standards have changed or something like that.
ANDY SCOTT I’m just looking at it now and there are a few things like it. Communication, it mentions red care. Well, everything is going digital, that doesn’t work anymore.
GEORGE STEVENSON That’s really helpful. So, that might be something that’s probably a 10 or 15 minute thing to look at.
ANDY SCOTT It’s literally go through it and establish if there is any changes and just change the headline.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, but it may that some other people who don’t know anywhere near as much as you do about control systems and things like that. Within this community, people like Pencho, for example, from Places For People, that might be something Pencho that you’d be interested in. So, the idea would be that we’ll set up maybe an hour session over the next month or so and we’ll look at each of these asset types and see if we can just refresh them so that they are current. And if you’re a user or maybe a maintainer or something like that, it may be that you want to sit in on that and maybe learn a bit. Andrea from Warrington Fire or Element, there’s things there that I’m sure that you’d be able to contribute to as well.
ANDREA TAYLOR Yeah, definitely, I’m happy to support. Warrington Fire is part of Element, that’s where the confusion comes in. We deal with a lot of different parts of the compartmentation, so happy to sit in on things.
GEORGE STEVENSON And similarly on the sprinkler side Alan, is that something that you’d be OK with doing? Just doing another review?
ALAN BRINSON Yeah, if it’s any particular questions. I had an hour long meeting with my Dutch colleague just before this where the main issue there was environmental data. And it seems that the Dutch government as far as we can tell is going off on a tangent and doing it in its own way, but we’re trying to understand the details. So, if there are environmental product declarations, life cycle analyses, if these are now issues we’re getting better and learning more about this and we can provide more of that kind of data if it’s needed.
GEORGE STEVENSON That would be very helpful. You’ve presumably got a network of installers and people that are involved in sprinklers.
ALAN BRINSON Yeah, I was at a meeting yesterday in Leeds and there were some residential installers there and I asked them how everything is. Everything seems to be fine, they’re busy, but there’s no issues that they report. Every now and then there is an issue in the market, but everything seemed to be fine. And then the manufacturers, they’ve been working on these EPDs, the demand first came from Norway a few years ago. These environmental things start in the north and they move south, so Spain will be five or six years from now I suppose. If that’s becoming a thing in the UK, we’re getting better at it.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, the challenge with all of this in my experience is that there’s so much to do and we’ve got to be careful that we don’t boil the ocean.
ALAN BRINSON Yeah, we only provide stuff when it’s needed, not before.
GEORGE STEVENSON There’s two elements…this is my suggestion, this isn’t my group, I want this group to be our group. But my suggestion is that we do the quick light touch just on that guidance that was produced a couple of years ago and just make sure that it’s still relevant and the like. But then i think this particular group, where I’m coming from at the moment with this is from an asset management perspective. The reason that I’m saying that is that what I’ve learned over the last couple of years is just how complicated all of this is. And in many cases it’s just quite overwhelming for people. So, what I’m trying to do from this is to say OK, what do asset managers need?
Because to be frank when they take on the information it’s already been selected. So, in Stephen’s case for example, in theory the right damper should have been selected for the right wall type. So therefore they shouldn’t need to go back to test evidence and information like that to be able to arrive at that. Because that’s beyond the capabilities of asset teams. Asset teams largely want to know where something is, what it is, what it’s doing and how do they inspect and maintain it. And when do they get the parts for when they need to replace it. That’s fairly basic stuff, but we’re not even doing that right.
So, if we can do that correctly and also make sure that we can use classification properly. Because again one of the lessons, we’ve been on dozens of projects now where you just can’t find the information. Because it either hasn’t been provided, or if it’s been provided it’s unintelligible because it’s not been classified and structured properly. Now, we’re running a session this afternoon at 2 o’clock around data engineering and, to a certain extent, using AI for that. Although I’m very cautious of promoting the AI bit because although we are using AI to do this type of thing, you’ve got to be very, very careful about controlling it.
So, it’s part of a data engineering structure to be able to, for example, identify where schedules are. And whether the schedules reference things on drawings properly and things like that. So, there’s some really cool things that we’re doing and others are doing to enable that. But from an asset management point of view, we just want to make sure that people know what they’ve got to do to an asset to keep it safe.
NICK HANN Can I just ask a question because I used to work for the defunct ISG for many years and you remember our colleague Jack Dearlove was heavily involved in this. But is the ultimate aim of this for the two part way for asset managers, of getting to a point where they could walk around the building with either a phone or a tablet, or the glasses, and actually look through the wall to see the asset that’s there if it’s hidden. Or look at the door and actually all of that asset information spring out. So that’s in the field, but then also in the head office, that functionality to look at what they’ve got in the building, to go outside of that standard maintenance regime.
Is that the sort of ultimate aim of where we’re getting to? So, that digitised digital twin of the building that holds all of that asset information so that people understand fully what the components to Stephen’s part is. What the components of this thing are, what are the wearing parts that can be replaced. And almost to that point we were talking about preemptive maintenance regimes where we understood how many times the doors were opened or whatever and it would pre-order a wearing bit and it would schedule out the maintenance. And that was all quite high level stuff and it never really got, is that the ultimate aim of what we’re trying to do here?
GEORGE STEVENSON OK, so the answer is yes, but when you say the ultimate aim the way information is presented needs to be appropriate to the person that’s actually carrying out the work. So, I think in many cases providing somebody with a 3D or a 360, certainly a 3D model or something like that, is just over the top. It would completely overwhelm most people. And that’s not because asset managers are Luddites, it’s because they probably just want a simple 2D representation to be able to identify things. But obviously the use of 360, and we’ve got a workshop tomorrow on using 360 photographs, rather than just the models, to actually address some of those things.
So, we’re very much into being able to pull this but the fundamental thing has to be right and that is we need the basic asset data. We need information, what’s connected to what, because often what’s connected to what isn’t going to be in your 3D model. It will be, unfortunately because that’s just the way models are created. if you’ve got something that’s maybe connected via a schematic we need to be able to hold those relationships between things as well. But yes, very much so, that’s where we’re going with it ultimately. is there anybody on the operational side who could contribute what they might like to, maybe some experiences you’ve got.
PAUL WOMACK The asset register, asset tagging is key. And I don’t believe you can actually start that until you’ve got the evidence which is where the 360 camera and the photographs come in. So once you’ve got that information, you can then go I didn’t realise that was there, or I didn’t realise that was there. And that is the starting point for the start of your asset tagging.
GEORGE STEVENSON OK, yeah, that’s good. In fact, I could show an example of that that we’re doing on the Golden Thread Taskforce. (shares screen). So this is something that I’ve nicked and I’ve been briefed on by some of Stephen’s colleagues. I think I got this from Paul McSoley. Broadly, it’s complex, isn’t it? But the key thing here from an asset management point of view is that bit there. To be able to check that there’s a breakaway joint so that if there’s a fire and this duct collapses, it doesn’t pull the damper out of the wall. Now, that’s obviously something that’s pretty fundamental, but it may not be something…in many cases, people don’t even know where those dampers are.
So, here’s an example of one that we’ve been doing with a contractor in Ireland on a college. In this particular case the fire dampers have been modelled. And it’s in the 3D model, it’s in the BIM model, but because they’ve actually created it properly using classification and standards we can then have a schedule of where all of those fire dampers are, all those assets are in the building. And you’ll see they’re all classified by Uniclass which makes it a lot easier to glue everything together. We’ve got the list of fire dampers there, there’s 11 different types of fire damper in this particular college. And then we’ve then got a list of the individual fire dampers, in this case they’ve used Lindab fire dampers.
So, you’ve got the information about those. You can then drill into a product library that has got the information about those fire dampers. But then you can have a very simple view, coming back to what you were saying Nick. Rather than a 3D view, the FMs often prefer something simple like that that enables them to identify where the fire compartments are. But the asset itself is connected to the 360 view. So, this 360 view was taken using a platform called OpenSpace, I think ISG used to use it as well. And there’s lots of systems like this now in construction to be able to monitor quality. But what we’ve got here is a connection between the 360 view, that asset and the asset data that was provided through the BIM model through schedules.
And that interrelationship doesn’t require the 3D model to be finished. Now, I’m not suggesting that 3D models shouldn’t be finished, but in practice in the industry there often just isn’t the money to get the final bits put in. Because the way that we procure construction often means that the installation contractors, they’re probably just working to schedules and drawings and things. They don’t have the commission, the funding, to put it into a BIM model. So therefore the BIM models are often only 70% complete. Everybody thinks that it will all be in there, but they don’t really think how that’s going to happen. Whereas the 360 photos, by nature those are the completed areas.
And then we can also then tie that back into the manufacturer’s details, and also the documents. So if, for example, you’ve got the test certificates, rather than the test certificates being provided on every single project and also the O&M documents, that can be added to a product library that then makes it easy to find. So, this can all be delivered using COBie and you can also record where things are. This is all now industry standard stuff. The information is, we’re using classifications which are industry standard, so everybody should be able to read that. The key thing is getting the original data.
NICK HANN George, just a quick one that we stumbled across was how are you dealing with replacement and upgrade as part of that process? Because we know that it might be 100% accurate on day 1 of handover, but by 6 months down the line if something has failed and somebody has come and replaced, that seems to be a problem that we never got to the bottom of. We tried, it’s a cultural thing, isn’t it? Is there a way of keeping that building updated 100% as a result of using it and upgrading and replacing, downgrading, whatever?
GEORGE STEVENSON Yes, definitely, it’s down to process. So, part of it, it’s not a technology issue, it’s actually a process and a management issue. And we’re doing a lot of work with PFI and PPP projects, private finance initiative projects where the requirement for keeping the records up-to-date is absolutely critical. But they still don’t do it. They then get huge penalties and as Active Plan, we end up doing that for them. For example, on hospitals work, they feed through the variation orders to us and we then update all of the records for them. But it doesn’t have to be like that, it can actually be done through proper process. But the critical thing is to actually make sure that it’s done.
Because as you say, in the first 12 months after handover quite regularly you’ll have 30% of the assets swapped out. But you don’t need to update it in the models. That’s the important thing to recognise, it’s the asset data, and that can then be connected back to things. So yeah, I think that’s an important area. Can I throw that out to the group? Margaret, how would you see information being updated during the operational life of things?
MARGARET SACKEY I said something in the chat earlier on just to say I have a history of checking lots of O&Ms and health & safety files, CDM, that sort of thing. And typically everything is never complete and it’s back and forth, back and forth sometimes over a year, to get the completed as-built drawings and so on from the project team, which is a shame. But as you say, it is absolutely needed in operations and maintenance at UCL we have a 60 strong DLO internal team, plus term contractors who need that information from day 1, and it is a struggle. But what I think is key is the client’s requirements. Which as we all know, for some reason, clients seem to rely on the supply chain to set the scene in terms of the requirements.
Surely it’s the clients that should set the scene. And the practice is as you’ve just described it, and other colleagues here. Unless the client is clear this is how we want it, this is the way that we want it, we will continue to get substandard O&M information ? 43mins 23secs as-built drawings. We have BIM models just as you’ve said, and most of our BIM models are not kept up-to-date, but there are two examples that are kept up-to-date. I said before there’s an award winning building in Dagenham where the model was created by the project team and handed over to the facilities management team. And they were charged, obviously we had to pay for it, to keep it up-to-date with the risk register.
But unfortunately again, it wasn’t in the original contract for that facilities management team and therefore it relies on the goodwill almost of the facilities management team to keep it up-to-date, regular monthly meetings with the facilities management team. So, if we can do it during the project, get as-built drawings properly updated by the design team, because it’s CDM regulation 12, we must have the design team check the as-builts. And a lot of organisations clients don’t ask the design team to check and therefore it comes in not completed. Or if it is completed stamped as-built but it still needs that review.
So, I definitely agree with your points raised earlier, George. But my question is to clients, I don’t know how many clients that we have on the call, but the idea of Golden Thread information for not just HRBs, non-HRBs. Is that the message of this BIM4Housing working groups?
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, the important thing is this is a BIM In Asset Management working group, rather than a BIM4Housing one. I’m just saying that because we very much want to look at this, most of the people involved here are involved in all types of buildings. So therefore what we want to do is make sure that, obviously we want to be able to deliver for housing, but also others. I've just noticed that Daniel Moorcroft has dropped off, but Daniel is going to be leading as champion with maybe somebody from Harmony, for example, on the door side of things.
Because I think fire doors are such an important area at the moment, I’d like to get somebody from Golden Thread Fire Delay on as well to that group. Because I think you guys are all doing high quality work, let’s raise the bar so that we can try and get more of that. Is there anybody else involved, Victoria, you’re a developer, aren’t you?
VICTORIA AYRE Yes, Be First, which is the company that I belong to, is in between the contractors and our client which is London Borough of Barking & Dagenham. So, all of this for me is really, really helpful and interesting because we need a clear scope of what our client wants. Which up until this point we haven’t had. We’ve got a fantastic team, Nikki’s actually on the call, they’re building their team and they’re starting to get information to us and let us know what we want and I’m in working groups with them to discuss it all.
But up until this point it’s kind of been led by us, rather than the contractors because the contractors don’t really want to give you much, they’d give you the bare minimum. Obviously we’ve turned around and said well, because we don’t know what our client wants you need to give us everything, so that’s obviously pushed back again. And a lot of the questions are why do they need it? Why do you need it? What are you using it for? So, this is great, this is really helpful for me.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, that’s exactly the question that we want to be answering as well. We want to basically say, at the base level you might have a hesitant say bronze, sliver and gold process. But it may be that just at the basic level we want to know where things are, what they’re connected to, what product was used. Just those basic things that, to be frank, is not happening. The other areas we can drill into. Robin Fraser, you’re a manufacturer of component parts that go to make up assets, aren’t you?
ROBIN FRASER Absolutely, yes we are. We’re an actuator manufacturer supplying Steve, amongst otter's, in the UK and worldwide. I think the only comment I’d make is really to reiterate what Steve said earlier on. We get a lot of calls into our tech team office asking for replacement actuators that may have been manufactured 20-30 years ago and may not be available anymore. And the end user wants to know can they have the latest equivalent. And we tend to bounce them back to Steve and other manufacturers of dampers in the Uk because we’re not qualified to make that call, basically. To comment on and possibly supply an actuator that might have been approved 20-30 years ago, but we’re not sure of its status now.
GEORGE STEVENSON One of the things that we’re trying to do, we’re not trying for this group to solve all of the issues. What we want is for this group to be the expert group on safety critical assets that can then ask for support from some of the other groups. So for example, one of the things that we’re looking at here is stuff called taxonomy and classifications. So, that is really the way in which you can find things. And if we can standardise that that’s going to make the job a lot easier because we can then make it so that the information is much more easily tracked down and then kept up-to-date.
The challenge is that there’s a whole range of different classifications, all of which are relevant, all of which have been put together for a particular purpose. But if we can relate, let’s say for example a fire door, or a fire damper, and we can classify it properly from an IFC perspective or an ETIM perspective, ETIM is the wholesaler’s classification system. Then we’ve got NRM, we’ve got Uniclass, we’ve got GS1 that’s involving now. So, these are all ways that an individual asset can be tagged, which is going to make it a lot easier to tie things together.
Also, one of the other things that Matt Wilkie who’s leading this particular initiative is looking at, is how we can make it tie back to some standard information sets. So, in other words, how buildings are classified, how assets are classified. And the detailed information about what goes into them as well. So, if you’re interested in getting involved in that, you don’t need to get involved in a deep dive and do all of the work. But if you’re interested in certain types of assets, let’s say for example those, could you just put in the chat any that you would like to attend a workshop on. Which will be led by somebody that’s a champion in that area. So, put in the chat if you’re interested in AOVs or dampers or fire doors or fire alarms and then we can build that out. We’ve got a series of sessions over these next two days that we’re going to be engaging with more people, so we’ll make you aware of when we’re actually going to be doing those individual sessions. In fact, probably what we’ll do is a Doddle poll to see when…
RICHARD FREER I think probably the best way of doing that, just put in the chat ‘roundtable’ and then we’ll send you a Doodle poll thing and you can tick which ones that you want to attend.
GEORGE STEVENSON So, you then become our expert steer in this. And obviously if you know other people that you know would be interested in this who are similar specialists. They are maybe even competitors but you want to get their input, Stephen was saying that he’s got a couple of people he would introduce. It just spreads the load, so if somebody can spend half an our every month (not every month), that would be helpful. And then obviously I was talking with Paul Womack yesterday and he was explaining to me how hydrants, because he’s ex fire service. So, we’ve got tremendous resources here of people who have got varying different levels of experience to what needs to be done and how it’s going to be used. So, join the community to put information into that.
PAUL WOMACK Just quickly, and hopefully it’s for Margaret’s benefit as well as many others. it doesn’t matter what building you’ve got, it’s a case of if the HSE, fire & rescue service, CQC, owners of the building, they just want to have confidence that if you’re looking after a building you know what’s in the building, you know how its managed and you know all of its assets. And I think that is what you can provide.
MARGARET SACKEY Thank you Paul, that’s very helpful. But the issue is it’s disparate, there’s different people who know different bits and we need to bring it together, Obviously we’ve all got common data environments and we’re trying to make sure that that will capture everything. But the history is left hand, right hand don’t know. And reserving bits of the asset because certain people didn’t leave information after they finished a project. So absolutely, thank you for that, and that’s really one of the reasons why we’re making sure that we have the same protocol.
It doesn’t matter what the building is, the protocol is we must have the relevant key building information, the Golden Thread. It starts with O&M, starts with the HSS file. Now the building regs compliance information certification, evidence of the compliance of building regs. So, that’s exactly why we’ve adopted that best practice approach. But thank you, and in fact that will help me because oh we don’t need to do it, the law doesn’t require this unless it’s an HRB. No, we are responsible for the building, HRB or not.
RICHARD FREER Margaret, you put in the chat that you think a number of people from UCL should be involved in this. How do we get to them?Can we do that via you?
MARGARET SACKEY Yeah, I’m just putting some names in that have had prior conversation with George. Yeah, there are some people that really should be feeding into this.
ANDREA TAYLOR I think as well, everyone’s touched on it, part of this is the culture and education piece. And obviously we all know that clients don’t often understand what their responsibilities are and as part of my role at Warrington Fire we’re actually looking at trying to help with that side of things. Now, George knows that as part of a working group I was on with him that I’m ex BSI as well. So, I come from a system certification world and I just look at all of these things and think sometimes if we give it a new name people get confused.
Whereas if you say to people, it’s a bit like your quality management system. You can set parts where Doris who owns the apartment has access, you can have the facilities management but you can segregate things off, But also it always does seem that the asset management register is always the thing that seems the biggest task in anything. In all management systems with this side of things it’s still the same and I think to rally get this somewhere we need to do the education piece as well. Which we all know, it’s just setting that up.
GEORGE STEVENSON One of the key things is recognising the importance of asset types. So, the reason that I’m saying that is that all too often the asset list that we get is actually a list of individual components or individual assets. And that’s great, but unless you know how they’re grouped together then the task is enormous. Because what we should be doing is mapping the asset type to a product, so that we’ve then got the product information in a manageable form.
And then by doing that it means that you can manage it going forward and you can tie against it things like SFG20, which is typically done at a type level rather than an individual component. The term component is also confusing because what Robin was saying earlier, the actuator, that’s both an asset and it’s a component in something. But from a COBie perspective it means an instance of that particular product, or that particular asset in the building. I’m sorry if that’s confusing, it probably isn’t for most people. Pencho, you as a fire engineer, is this helpful from your perspective also?
PENCHO STUDENKOV Yeah, absolutely and based on the role I’m currently actually as a responsible person, so it will be.
GEORGE STEVENSON And Assumpta, you were just saying that you’ve just invited a client. You’re with Southern, aren’t you? And just finally Bernard, I didn’t want to forget what you’d put in the chat. That’s a very specific example of maybe information about the asset and also how that asset is performing. Could you just explain what you were talking about there in terms of how you can contribute?
MARGARET SACKEY I’ve put the link into the chat for the conference that we’ve got coming up, the Golden Thread, fire safety, building safety Golden Thread conference being hosted at UCL, in conjunction with the London universities. To raise the profile in terms of raising awareness at the education piece that Andrea was speaking about. We can’t say enough to our colleagues, our clients, our senior managers, about how important the joining of the dots is. And yet we’re all coming up with examples where people still haven’t got it.
This is key, this is the new world order, this is the way forward, to make sure we connect with the information being collated and we make it available to those that need it. This conference is free, available to those who attend, hybrid on Teams as well as in person. Dame Judith is a keynote speaker and also Grenfell enquiry Professor Jose, a Grenfell enquiry expert witness, a UCL head of department. But basically if anyone here feels that it will be a useful conference to attend and contribute to.
We’re really looking forward to George brining in some of the survey information that’s come out from your work and raising the profile, if that’s OK with you George. Raising the profile of this great work because it is so necessary to make sure what we’re doing counts for the information that we collate on our buildings and make it available to those who need it.
GEORGE STEVENSON One of the things that actually you’ve just touched on there, which I did want to raise when Alan and Andy are on the call as well. Is that one of the challenges is that the interrelationship between systems and the importance of those being connected. When I was talking with Stephen Gore earlier, he was talking about the control system for the dampers, so the damper control system. Which he explained that there’s a need to have that integrated with the fire management system, but not controlled by the fire management system. And I said to him, so which work package would that fall into from a construction perspective?
And he wasn’t sure. And that’s a good example, because is that part of the mechanical package? Or is it an electrical specialty? I guess on some projects there’s a controls package, I don’t know. But it sort of drops between, it could drop between the stalls. Alan, are you familiar with that at all?
ALAN BRINSON No, I’m not, this is not something I ever deal with. As i say, we have an association so I think the way that it works with sprinklers, it’s not handled by the sprinkler industry at all. I don’t know who does it, if anybody. Basically they get contracts to provide a service and it’s very much that way round. They will say that you should do maintenance and they say that mostly they do get contracts to do maintenance so they will remind their customers and their clients that maintenance is due, and they usually do do it. But that’s it, I haven’t heard any other way that this is approached.
GEORGE STEVENSON But the sprinkler system presumably would be connected into the fire alarm system, wouldn’t it?
ALAN BRINSON Well, when it goes into alarm it generates an alarm at the fire alarm panel.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, that’s what I meant actually.
ALAN BRINSON It’s not always so sophisticated that those outside the building or elsewhere would know that it was a sprinkler system that had gone into alarm. So you appreciate that if a fire alarm goes off the fire brigade doesn’t always turn up, especially not, as I understand, in residential buildings they don’t always turn up, they want to know that there really is a fire. If the sprinkler system has gone off there’s either a fire or you’ve got a leak, so somebody needs to turn up. But that level of sophistication what I understand isn’t always there.
PAUL WOMACK Going on from that and this is part of your asset list is knowing where the stop valve is to shut off the water supply for sprinklers and everything.
ALAN BRINSON Yes, we had a discussion about that yesterday with a number of fire officers, do they know in the building where to find them? In theory they should all be well marked, but that isn’t always the case. Or it’s in a building and it’s locked in a cupboard somewhere and nobody’s got the key.
PAUL WOMACK It gets expensive when the fire brigade use their own size 11 keys.
ALAN BRINSON Yes.
BERNARD HORNUNG I reached the age of 68 in May and I decided to retire from working full time with Coltraco Ultrasonics to set up a new company to actually offer the service. So, instead of trying to sell the technology, I now offer air leak surveys. To actually use the technology and offer the service.
GEORGE STEVENSON So, with an air leak service would that tie in to any of those asset types?
BERNARD HORNUNG Hugely, because you can quantify air flow rate through a closed fire door or a closed flat entrance door. And you can then pinpoint exactly where that leak is. And then you can remediate rather than replace the asset. It would also give you an air permeability value, so you can ensure that that fire door is compliant, or that flat entrance door is compliant. And I’m really working towards the requirements which I think will crystallise on the 2nd of September 2029 in four years time. When this obviously will become necessary as the building standard becomes obsolete and we take on the rather more robust European standards in air leakage through fire doors. You’ve got four years in which to sort ourselves out and that’s what I’m working towards.
GEORGE STEVENSON And where would that sit as a discipline would you say in a client organisation like maybe UCL?
BERNARD HORNUNG I think it will ultimately sit with a responsible person because over the next four years what I foresee happening is that the visual only inspections are going to have to be complemented with a scientific method to actually quantify the airflow rate. Because it is invisible data, we can’t do it without the scientific instrument. And you need a scientific instrument to be able to do this and you need a scientific instrument that can do it quickly. And then also it has been verified. it took us five years, we started on this in 2020 and it was only on the 22nd of May this year that the instrument was tested and approved and everything else. So, it’s been a long burn, but we got there. I’ll send you the paper.
GEORGE STEVENSON Please do. We’re going to be publishing when the dates are and obviously you can elect to come on to whichever ones you think are going to be appropriate. I think this is an education things as well, to get people to understand the value of what you’re doing and also what Coltraco are doing.
BERNARD HORNUNG It’s a look forward to over the next four years and sorting ourselves out. The last fire that I fought was 47 years ago when I was in the Army during the fireman’s strike. And my own experience was the number of people who were overwhelmed by carbon monoxide poisoning and who were unconscious. And if we hadn’t found them, if we hadn’t rescued them for the buildings that they were in, eventually the fire would have caught up and they would have been burnt. So toxicity is something which in particularly cold smoke, is something which I am passionate to try and stop.
ANDY SCOTT And it’s not just carbon mon, hydrogen cyanide from burning plastics, that’s what killed the people in Grenfell.
BERNARD HORNUNG Yes and it’s the whole thing, you’re absolutely right, it’s the whole toxicity issue. Which then obviously serving in the Army I was trained in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, I did various courses at Porton Down. And the whole aspect of toxicity is something that we soldiers really understand.
CHAT
bernard hornung (External)…… I offer my services as a champion in quantifying air flow rate through a closed fire door and/or flat entrance door, so that this data is available.
Sackey, Margaret (External)…. Hi Richard, George and colleagues - this is such valuable work and important collaboration across the built environment disciplines. In UCL - having reviewed H&S Files / O&M's for many years and now BSA Assurance Information - we are seeking to adopt a best practice approach. Golden thread information needs to be collated for all buildings - HRB's and Non HRB's. Is this the view this group ? If so - are we seeing other client organisations adopting this approach.
Nikki Barrow (External)… Not seeing this across our clients, but very much a champion for this approach
Sackey, Margaret (External)… Hi George - Yes indeed - there are others in UCL who would have much to contribute to these discussions.....Hi Victoria Ayre - I left BD 3 weeks ago
Sackey, Margaret (External)…. Hi All -this hybrid Building Safety & Golden Thread Fire Safety Conference being arranged on 3rd Sept....will be speaking to these issues - There will also be some ongoing workshops to follow.... https://goldenthreadfiredelay.com/bsa-golden-thread-fire-safety-conference/
bernard hornung (External)… I have recently retired from working full time with Coltraco Ultrasonics, to offer the service the technology I was commercialising offers. I now offer air leak surveys using the PortascannerAIRTIGHT.
Andrea Taylor (External)… Sorry need to leave for another meeting. George Stevenson I'll introduce you to someone who would be valuable on the fire doors group. Sackey, Margaret thanks for the link to the conference - hopefully see you there!