BIM in Asset Management Monthly Forum 17-07-2025

BIM IN ASSET MANAGEMENT MONTHLY FORUM 17-07-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON (shares screen). Basically, we’ve got a group here that we’ve got good connections into the government. You’ll see that was a comment that came from the lead on the Golden Thread. And now they are the custodians of the Regulator, I think that’s a good thing. And this was specifically from Tim Galloway to me about a month ago. So, I think the whole idea of the industry coming together to come back with an industry response is good, well received. For those of you that don’t know, we’ve got two groups, both of which are overlapping in that we’ve got people that are working in both.

We’ve gotBIM3Housing which we took over about 5 years ago and we’ve done a lot there. And we then decided to look specifically at the asset management side of that and broaden it to all types of buildings, Because there’s been a lot of stuff that we’re producing in BIM4Housing, other types of buildings universities, schools etc. And what we did within BIM4Housing, we created a number of different working groups, interest groups, who were focused at say development. And the principal idea that we’re looking at here is better information management. For us, BIM does not mean 3D modelling,

3D models may be part of what BIM is, but by no means the only thing. And the key thing here is that if, for example, you’re building the building and you’re in the construction group, you want to be able to understand what information you could get better from the development group. So, we’ve set that up so that those communications can work through, and the same with operations. How can operations operate more effectively if the construction team tell them what they’ve installed? So, we’ve set up a number of different workstreams over the last few years and we’ve produced some amazing information, the groups have produced some fantastic information.

And it’s all available on the BIM4Housing website under publications. We also were asked to lead the Golden Thread Initiative Asset and Survey Information Group and we actually produced the guidance that went through to MHCLG and then ended up with the Construction Leadership Council. So, these working groups, they’re all manufacturers there, they’re all designers there, the others over there are all operations people. And the key thing about this approach is that we get competitors often sitting around the table debating. That’s Ana Matic there from Scott Wilson and then we’ve got PRO there as well. So, the principle is that people are working together.

Different stakeholders need different information, so we recognise that you need different information for different people. And part of that was to do a deep dive and find out what information do you need about a smoke vent or a fire damper. And all of that, we’ve got considerable information on that if you’re interested and you need to drill into that. We’ve also worked collaboratively, we’ve got a Miro board where the team have put together their interpretation of the legislation, the standing of things. And you’re welcome to participate in that. If you’re interested in having access to the Miro board and also contributing to it just put ‘Miro’ in the chat and we’ll get the information out to you.

All of those people there are part of the groups that are using that information. We’ve also done a lot around standardisation of things, so fire door inspections, for example. We’ve taken something that was developed for the NHS and we’ve applied it to residential, so we’ve got standardised ways of doing fire door inspections which is tremendous learning for people. And we’ve recently just worked with Golden Thread Fire Delay to do the same with fire dampers and fire stopping, Now, if you’re interested in this area and you want to get involved in either fire dampers or fire stopping, then there’s a safety critical assets group that we’ve established which is going to be meeting to discuss these things.

So, if you’re interested in getting involved in safety critical assets put ‘safety assets’ in the chat. In particular we’re setting up a group focused on fire doors. I’m going to hand over to Richard now and he can just explain what we’ve done on the polls. I’ve got this, Richard, to explain what we did initially.

RICHARD FREER That’s cool, if you can just put that up. We run a poll every month, this just gives you an idea of the sort of results that we’ve been getting which George actually said he wasn’t surprised, I was quite shocked. 92% of respondents are not confident that they’ll receive accurate and complete Regulation 38 information. 72% are not confident that the H&S and O&M information about a building is accurate and updated. Pretty scary stuff. 43% not confident that the fire & emergency files are accurate and will be updated. And 89% don’t believe that their SEO or FD are aware of their duties under the BSA. We’ve got a poll for this week. If you’d like to click on that link in the chat and go to the poll and I’ll go through the questions. Please take the time to do this because it’s valuable stuff.

GEORGE STEVENSON The other thing I would say is that the group here, if you’ve got some questions that you would like to ask, and there’s them in here that have been asked by people that are part of the Golden Thread Group, then let us know.

RICHARD FREER OK, the July poll. Asset managers, do you have regularly updated BIM models that reflect changes to assets and buildings? Yes or no. Number 2, on your most recent project did you receive a BIM model that reflects the detail of what was actually built? Yes or no. Of your buildings, how many have reliable as-built drawings? 100%, 75, 50, 25, 10 or 0. How confident are you that the asset information you have for your building is accurate? 100%, 75, 50, 25, 10 or 0.

Question 5, is an asset list required to satisfy the BSR Gateway 3 submission? Yes or no. Number 6, is COBie the best IFC schema to deliver an asset list? Yes or no. Question 7, for a Gateway 2 submission are dimensioned reflected ceiling plans required showing sprinkler heads? Question 8, are your projects completing MEP product selection and coordination by Gateway 2? Yes or no.

GEORGE STEVENSON Can I just clarify on that. The point about that is that under the Gateway 2 now the design is supposed to be complete before you start constructing. And one of the challenging areas of that is that contractor design portion that’s allocated to MEP. And one of the reasons that we’re asking the question is that it’s encouraging that a number of Tier 1s now are actually making sure that that’s being done ahead of time. So, the reason it’s there is just to get a feel for whether or how widespread the progressive movement is.

RICHARD FREER OK, so once you’ve finished those click the submit button. Just quickly on something George said earlier. He mentioned the working groups that we’ve got in BIM4Housing. I just want top mention those because there could well be people here who’d be interested in possibly participating. Particularly in our design group, the development group, operations group and we’ve got a new group that spans across BIM4Housing and BIM In Asset Management which is advisory and consultants.

So, if you’re a designer you might put ‘design’ in the chat, if you’re interested in operations put ‘operations’ in the chat. If you’re interested in development put ‘development’ in the chat and if’ you’re a consultant who wants to get together with a lot of likeminded people and explore everything about consultancy, just put ‘consultancy’ in the chat. George, do you want to give us an overview of the Golden Thread Taskforce.

GEORGE STEVENSON (shares screen). So, what does the Golden Thread mean? It means lots of things to different people. But this is what the Construction Leadership Council have identified and I want to concentrate on two things and it’s a 70-80 page document. One of the important things is that it needs to be considered as a single system, not just individual systems. And also we need something that identifies how things work together, rather than in isolation. So, for example, just making sure that your fire doors are good doesn’t actually satisfy the issue. This is an example where Sodexo and John Cisk worked collaboratively, it was a great piece of work that they did, the BIM model.

And in the BIM model they’d actually created GUIDs which we were able to tap into and connect to product libraries and asset data. And the important thing about this is that the information about the assets and the products is easily managed by Sodexo. They don’t need any Revit expertise to be able to do that. The point is there that that Grundfos pump is then reusable on many different projects. So, what we’re able to do here, and this is the next part, what Sodexo have done is they took 360 photos of all the key plant areas and they’ve tide it back to the same assets that are connected to the BIM models.So, the COBie data for these assets is written to the database, but it’s also connected to the 360 photos. This is probably 4 years old now. And what they do is if they make any changes they just go and take a new 360 photo.

This is an example of the same thing, but they’re using it for verification of what’s been installed. So, this is another way of the as-built BIM model being managed. It’s not just the 3D CAD model it’s also the asset data which has been federated from many different sources, different disciplines. And then the FM team is then able to relate that back to the 360 photo, which is the true as-built because you’ve actually got the thing there. And when they make any changes all they have to do is go and take a new 360 and they can then update the 360 by connecting it to the asset data. So, I think that’s a different way of looking at what the handover information needs to be.

It also means that the Golden Thread means making sure that the safety of the tenants and residents is protected. And in this case we’ve got a fire breaks out in a kitchen, we need to make sure that the smoke doesn’t get into that stairwell. And there’s a number of different protective measures in place. There’s compartmentation and what’s really critical with that is making sure that all of the penetration seals work and when something still gets through you’ve then got smoke control, detection and signage. But all of those have got to be coherent. And if we’ve got Golden Thread information, which we may have from different disciplines.

What we’ve then got is this connection back to the asset data for this door which has come through from the BIM model. But also it can then be connected back to the product data from the manufacturer.And this is probably the most important thing. What we’re doing here is identifying which spaces are being protected by that door and that wall. And the result of that is that if we’ve then got that unique ID in the system, irrespective of which software is then used to go and do the inspections, they’re all recording it against that same asset. And that’s something that we’re going to be covering in one of the project information a little bit later.

One of the things that was debated in the BIM4Housing design group this week is how do we identify when something is as-built. So, a lot of contractors now are pushing back from providing clients with as-built drawings. In some cases they’re calling them as constructed, which is probably the same. Final construction is probably more common, and also we’re seeing for construction, which for me as a lay person that seems way too early. So, one of the challenges with that is to say well, this is now a requirement, it has been for a long time, you need an as-built plan of the building showing where…so, we therefore do need as-built information.

And each project now, there’s got to be a formal acceptance by the client to say that they’ve got all of the information that they need to support the building, this is legal document. And also has to sign a declaration to say that they’ve provided everything. The challenge is what does everything mean? And that’s to some extent what we’re trying to address with the Golden Thread Taskforce within our group here. So, the principle here is to have a pretty simple way of auditing Regulation 38. These are the asset types that are mentioned in the regulations. And if we can make sure that we’ve got reference for each item, where it’s located, what system its part of, what product was used and the data sheets for it. Who installed it, who commissioned it, who’s inspected it and who’s maintaining it.

Those are the key bits of information, irrespective of the method by which that’s been achieved. And so what we’re doing here, we’ve got a big group already of people that have taken the time to ? 20 mins 49secs regulations and therefore they are probably the top 5% in the industry. And we’d like very much if you are interested in this area as well, to some extent the fact that you’re on this call indicates that you are. If you’re not part of that group yet then put ‘Taskforce’ in the chat and we’ll come back to you and see if you qualify to come into the group. And therefore perhaps get involved in some of the projects. And then we’ve got software companies involved as well now.

What we’re trying to do within the Golden Thread Taskforce, we’re looking to have projects that we can work on together…(AUDIO DROPS OUT) collaborate on solutions, learn from the mistakes that we’re making and also celebrate successes. So, we’ve actually got some projects that we can use and we’re going to be identifying people who are willing to be mentors to people that don’t know as much as they do. And also people that want to learn. So, the ones I’m going to cover in minute is we’v got a residential 1970s project, we’ve got a data centre retrofit, we’ve got a healthcare estate and also an education estate. So, these are ones that if you’re interested in getting involved in those then bear that in mind, I’ll be covering that later.

One of the challenges we’ve got is being able…(AUDIO DROPS OUT) ductwork dampers are and also to make sure that you need to know where they are because if there’s a fire and that duct is pulled down, we don’t want it to be pulling the damper out of the wall. So, you need to know where they are. So, in this example, this is what the team working on this project, it’s Autodesk, OpenSpace, QFM who did the FM, Rattigans and Sodexo. In this particular model was very good, the dampers were modelled and therefore we’ve actually got not just the fire dampers, but we’ve also got what the products were that we used as well. And because the asset data is connected to the product library you’ve then got the information about where that particular product is and also…(AUDIO DROPS OUT).

And this is the key thing that Lewis is going to talk to us about. The 360s, that was all captured during the construction process nothing to do with asset management. It was done by the contractor so that they’ve got a record of where those fire dampers were installed. And by connecting the two things together, the fire damper and the 360 photo and the data that was in the BIM model, we’ve got something that’s then properly joined up. And in this case it’s also been connected back to the documentation as well. So, that becomes a very pragmatic way of creating the Golden Thread. And we’d like other examples of that. If there are other people on this call that have got examples of that type of joined up process, please share them and we can perhaps feature them on a future project.

This is another example of the OpenSpace system works, when its been added to with asset data. So, we’ve got there the detailed asset list and that is then connected back to the OpenSpace system which I think Lewis is going to go through. But the important thing about this is that you’ve got an original photograph before the ceilings went up, so you can see what was there behind it. So, that becomes a very, very good as-built BIM model. So here, that’s what was actually as-built because it’s 360 because it’s a photograph. But what we’re doing is we’re enhancing it with smart information. Lewis from OpenSpace, are you there?

RICHARD FREER I don’t think so. Can you speak anymore about OpenSpace? Because they’ve come up a lot over the last couple of months and I was quite looking forward to hearing him giving us some of the gen on it. Let’s go into a Q&A, any questions? Any thoughts or suggestions?

ALEX BAUER Just a bit of an understanding on OpenSpace. I’m part of Multivista and there’s a couple of other people from Multivista on the call. We’re part of Hexagon, so obviously we provide a boots on the ground service, very different to OpenSpace. OpenSpace is a DIY solution that is reliant on the contractor going round the site taking photographs. And they own the data. So obviously when they’re doing it it’s their data. So if a contractual issue arises, obviously they don’t have to share anything. They are not obliged to share anything and it’s only as good as the person taking the photographs. We do a lot of work with contractors up in the North West and there’s some guys from the London office on the call.

But we were sort of competing with OpenSpace with Morgan Sindall, but Morgan Sindall have sort of moved away from that because what they were finding is when the projects were coming out of the ground they found it quite easy to capture it. When the building is starting to be framed out, it was just falling apart and obviously junior site members weren’t able to take the photographs, they just didn’t have the time, they were getting pulled from pillar to post. And they wanted that obviously unbiased record where we’re just going round taking the photographs and giving them that sort of data into drawings. So, that’s the sort of differences between…

RICHARD FREER So, OpenSpace is more DIY, like you do it yourself, whereas you go and do it for the client.

ALEX BAUER Yes, we’re purely a boots on the ground service. Because obviously our affiliation with Leica, that’s why I mentioned a question about the John Sisk model because we’re like a sister company and an guy called Klaus is on the call who does a lot of laser scanning for us, We use Leica tech, but we go in and create the BIM models. And I know Clarion are on the call, and I know that Klaus and the team in London do a lot of work with Clarion on producing their as-built drawings and stuff like that. But the reason why I asked a question was about tolerances and whether that would just scan at the end of the project. Or whether that would scan throughout the project, relating to deviations and clashes, whether that was actually taken in to account to actually be a full as-built model at the end, rather than just a model.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think the point is, Alex, I invited Charles Hill from Multivista to do a session today, and he’s going to arrange that. We very much want the input from Multivista as well. But I think the important thing here, one of the things that we’re questioning as an asset management team, and this is the point, a lot of effort is going in to creating Revit models, for example. And we’re an Autodesk developer, by the way, so I’m not criticising Revit, but there’s a question as to what people are going to do with that model once you’ve created it. And arguably the 360 information that you’re capturing as well, that’s probably more sustainable, as far as FMs are concerned.

Because there’s a big investment goes in from a modelling perspective to try and finish the model. And in many cases it never really gets finished because the M&E side of things, the level of detail that’s actually needed for asset managers, for example where are the valves, often doesn’t get added because the designers haven’t put it in and specialist contractors haven’t. So, there’s a whole range of different things here that we’re trying to engage the community in.

RICHARD FREER Yeah, absolutely, I am going to stress, we are absolutely technologically agnostic. We want to cover any and everything.

CHANDAN SUTRADHAR I just wanted to understand how OpenSpace helps in the ? 32 mins 22secs stages. Like if you are talking about any project starts from design to construction and the maintenance, we sure that asset management the process and explain well. Now, as you know the model has started from the design and also the handover stage. So, the asset management model along with the OpenSpace, how it is integrated well from the beginning to the maintenance team so that they can utilise it properly. Or OpenSpace is also offering CMS solution, or it’s only the digital tool platform? Or how the OpenSpace combinds offering altogether this product?

GEORGE STEVENSON What OpenSpace are doing, they’re recording what’s being installed. So, they’re not working at the design end, they’re not working post-completion. Active Plan is, so that’s what we’re…(AUDIO DROPS OUT)…is designed from the outset and we’re capturing the asset information progressively through the process. The OpenSpace element, and a lot of the other tools that are being used, not just OpenSpace. There’s many others, it’s been a very great success in the industry capturing what’s being installed. What we’re saying is there’s ways of leveraging that now, so that that can then be more easily kept up-to-date. Because taking new 360 photos is straightforward.

RICHARD FREER We’re going to move on now to something very current, data engineering and AI. George, you’re going to do that with Paul Oakley.

GEORGE STEVENSON (shares screen). We’ve got a couple of interest groups that we’re pulling together now. We’ve got people that are interested in data management, data engineering and also AI. So, this is a particular workstream that we’d like people to contribute to. So, I’m just going to give you some examples of some live project work that we’ve been doing. One of the challenges that we’ve got is that there’s a lot of information that’s delivered just as PDF documents. And in this particular case, this is a fire stopping report, and it’s got some really good detail in it. And you’ll see here that as we run through there’s a lot of detail and then it’s a fairly typical way that this is done. The location of that fire stopping asset is just put as a pin on an image of a drawing.

Now, that in itself, it may appear to be adequate to do it, but if you’re an asset manager how are you going to identify where that fire stopping is? You’ve got to then go and open the report and then cross reference it to the building. So, what we’ve done is we’ve then taken that and then rather than it being just a pin on the report, then you’ve got to open up dozens of drawings to be able to find it, we’ve extracted that information from the image and from the report and put it into a COBie dataset. By doing that we’ve got the tag number of the asset and also where it is. And now this is now it in that same building.

So, what we’ve now got is we’ve got the fire stopping for all of the floor that’s come through from that report. But it’s all being generated so that the fire asset manager can then just click through and see where all of those assets are. Now, this is technically boring for some people, I imagine, but it’s actually immensely useful. Because what we’re doing is taking information that was locked in a PDF document and bringing it out. Here, we are overlaying that with a drawing. So, this isn’t a model, it’s just a CAD drawing, an image, a PDF, of the compartmentation. And what we’re also then able to do is do the same with the fire doors.

And that information can then be also read from the database into the spacial model, so you’ve got a combination. You’ve got here information that includes the ironmongery and the information about the door schedules as well. So, by pulling these things together we’re actually got intelligent information that was locked away in drawings and schedules and PDF reports. So, we’re happy to share with you the methodology that we’re using on that. I’m sure that other people in this group are using AI in all sorts of interesting ways.

So, we’d like to encourage you if you are doing that type of thing, or maybe you want to learn how to do it, then join this particular working group and we’ll share that information with you. We’re sharing this as part of the Golden Thread Taskforce.

RICHARD FREER You’re asking people to join which one, George?

GEORGE STEVENSON This is the AI and data engineering group.

RICHARD FREER So put ‘data’ in the chat if you want to join this AI and data engineering initiative.

GEORGE STEVENSON I’d also like to take the opportunity to just flag up, I mentioned at the beginning that we’re starting the fire safety critical group again, in particular looking at fire doors. So, we’re revisiting the fire door information and I’ve got Daniel McCroft on, he’s leading the National Door Summit. He works for a manufacturer. Can I introduce you, Daniel? Can you just say something about what you’re trying to do and how we’re going to try and work together?

DANIEL McCROFT Thanks George, this has been a great session. We’re a manufacturer of timber fire door sets. We’ve been across various sectors in the construction industry. Initially the business itself started in 1999, but we’ve procured various entities over the years, including Hall & Tawse joinery from Balfour Beatty in 2012 which to some may be a recognisable organisation that goes back to the late 1800s. And we still employ people that have been with us essentially for 40 years with that organisation. So, we do have a lot of skill sets within the business, we’re obviously always seeking to learn and we do not like the word expert. So, we’d like to think that we’re professionals at what we do, but we’ve always got something to learn.

There a a lot coming up around product regulations of the back of the Building Safety Act that’s not really being spoken about much in the industry. We’ve got our own events organisation, that you’ve just alluded to George, the National Door Summit. We’ve done various events before, either stand alone events or fringe events to big industry shows. And more recently we partnered with yourself for the National Door Summit in Manchester alongside the Housing 2025. That was really well attended, we had some excellent engagement from there it that event, talking about the upcoming product regulations and how it’s impacting the industry.

And for us what’s really, really important is we go back to basics when we’re looking at products that have bene tested. And looking at learning lessons from good specifications, weak specifications. Specifications that lack formed intelligence in them and also cutting out some of the complexity and dark arts, myths that I think have embedded themselves in the industry that I think particularly clients have found very frustrating to work with. Because you look at a door and you think oh, it’s a door, but it actually can be a very, very complicated asset to understand and made up of a myriad of component parts. So, we would like to try and make it simple to understand and go back to basics, so that’s our part to play.

We do a lot in social housing, we also do a lot in the new build sector as well. So we work with Tier 1 contractors and subcontractors, but we work with specifiers, architects and end clients, end to end.

GEORGE STEVENSON So, the purpose of this is that we’ll bring together people who are door manufacturers, door fabricators, door installers, door inspectors and people that maintain doors. And that’s just doors. We’re also going to, in particular because of the work that we’ve been doing on fire dampers and ventilation systems as well, we’re going to open it up to that as well. So, if you are involved in any of those areas, or maybe you know somebody that you use regularly that you’d like them to become more Golden Thread aware, then maybe put their mane in the chat and we can invite them. The principle is that the knowledge is in the industry and if we can bring people together and we can share it then everybody benefits.

RICHARD FREER We’re going to be holding a number of one-to-one sessions where you can have a 15-20 minute chat with a couple of the members of the Taskforce and get some view of what we’re doing with that and your suggestions, hopefully. If anybody is interested in that put ‘one-to-one’ in the chat and we’ll contact you.

MARGARET SACKEY I’m from University College London. Really great to connect with George again, we’ve spoken several times. Is Sodexo on this call, just out of interest?

GARY RICHMOND Yes.

MARGARET SACKEY Brilliant. If I could just contact whoever that was, that'd be fantastic.

GEORGE STEVENSON (shares screen). The principle that we’re working on here…one of the challenges that we’ve got is that the information is in a range of different purposes and therefore what we’re trying to do is bring things together. So that we’ve got the information in different, whether it’s coming from BIM models, whether it’s coming from schedules or whether it’s coming from 360s. We’ve then got that information in a simpler, structured way and making it so that it’s more findable. So, information that is maybe captured as 360s, we can then bring those things together and make them smart, make them searchable.

And part of the process there is to look at this from a point of view of what else are we then going to connect it to. The principle here is that we’ve got information that is smart and therefore it can connect back into a lot of the processes that are already operating during the construction process, so it becomes addressable. So the question that one of our colleagues asked earlier in terms of does it connect back to, for example, maintenance information or the like. Because it is machine-readable it can connect back into any application or any dataset. Also, the way the 360 is captured can be on a variety of different ways, Barry is going to show us some examples of that.

And the key thing is that the information is already being collected, from the asset manager’s point of view, for different purposes, in most cases for quality. So as Alex from Multivista was saying, that’s something that they’re doing for the construction team. So, from the asset manager’s perspective that is information that could be very useable and valuable going forward. Parts of the process that we’re getting to with the Taskforce is then to look at how that’s going to be done. Is it being used to capture information? To validate information? We’ve got a project at the moment where one of the big surveying firms is planning to use it for conditioned assessment.

Also to improve procurement, to make it easier to take away some of the uncertainty on procurement. There’s safety, disabled access and PEEPs and alike. Also, we’ve got a leading fire engineering company looking at this from a point of view of adding 360s to their fire risk assessments. And also how do we then make it so that O&Ms are easier to navigate using 360s? So, the point about this is that we’re then enhancing that type of information. We’re trying to make this so that we’re starting a basic level of capturing documents, initially, and then capturing model information, but making sure that the documents relate to elements in the models. And then, where it’s appropriate, make it a digital twin.

So these are generic processes that we’re trying to encourage. And this example here, this is one that we started two years ago with Tower Hamlets. And here we’ve got 78 tower blocks…So, we’ve got hospitals that we’re working with and this is one of Carolyn’s projects. Carolyn, do you want to speak to this for a moment to say what you’re looking for from 360s on this?

CAROLYN FLYNN What I’m looking for on the 360 is obviously the client we have has a number of hospitals within their portfolio. And they are based down in London, so the sites are country wide. And when I do take these on the 360 I’m looking to working on the project, number one showing the progress to the client, and two, explaining to the client where we are and what they need to do. It could be because we’re looking at trends in between the maintenance services, how many reactors we’re having. So, we’re trying to point out to the client what you need to change, the condition of your assets.

And obviously what the asset actually is because a number of top management don’t actually know what the asset is, so we’re trying to show that. And with the 360 and all of the information we can capture this. Thereby when I go into a meeting it makes life easy because everything is there. The pictures from the 360 as well as the surrounding asset information, the necessary information. It also shows us a before and after, what it looked like before, what it will look like after and anything that we need to get rid of in between. So, it works pretty well for us.

GEORGE STEVENSON This is another project that we’ve got as a contributor. Nik and his colleague Paul have taken 360 photos of a particular building. They’ve given us this portfolio, I think there’s about 70-80 buildings.

NIK BYGATE We’ve got 76 locations from Whitby down to Scunthorpe on the South Bank.

GEORGE STEVENSON So, what we’ve done, they’ve given us the asset list, this is their master asset sort of taxonomy. And those have then been imported into the database and then this is one of their buildings. They’ve just taken 360 photos and that’s now in the platform, so we’re then able to see that. And you can then go and tag the assets what you see from that. So, one of the things that we’re looking for the group to do, to start to do this as a collaborative venture, is to be able to go and tag the assets that they can see in that 360 and then look at how we can then glue together other information.

So, part of the process, and this is what we’re encouraging people to perhaps look at here, the knowledge is in the team, the collaborative working groups, and in the Taskforce. So what this has done, that hoist, that’s now been tagged and it’s now written to the database, so that can be connected back to SFG20 or whatever. And this is a project that Barry and I have just been working on this morning, which is Tower Hamlets. This is a market in East London and we’ve been doing that in partnership with a company called Cybase Solutions to just do the initial flag. I’m going to ask Barry to step in here and explain what we’re doing as far as the preparation.

BARRY BASSNETT What we’re doing at Watney Market is we’re trying to come up with a scheme we can share for those people that have no experience of using 360 for asset management, rather than a construction phase. Obviously it’s great people at Multivista and OpenSpace and people like that who are using it during construction, but there’s a big change and a slightly different approach if you have existing estate stock. So, what we’re trying to do at Watney Market is we’re taking this to try and establish a best practice of what you should do from the start.

So, this morning we’ve been out doing some drone imagery to get a 3D model of it, but we’re going to be sharing as we go through the journey of documentation. Laser scanning, constructing a BIM model relevant to what the needs of the client are, Using 360 for asset inspection and different aspects of that, particularly to do with fire safety. And so we’ll be documenting this as we go through, so we’re going to be keeping a journal and setting up a page on a website somewhere.

Just sharing that journey with you so we can say what’s the best practice in terms of documenting things now, but also making it future proof so someone can walk in later on with a 360 camera and stitch everything in so they know where those photographs were taken. So, that’s what we’re going to be doing over the next 4 or 5 months, I guess, and sharing that.

GEORGE STEVENSON The important point on that is that we’re not actually doing this work. What we’re doing is we’re working to actually define the specification so that we’re going to be going out to the market to tender. So people like Mulitvista and Plowman Craven and other people that are probably on this call may be interested in this as a project. But not just them, the project also is going to require compartmentation surveys to be done. It's going to require fire engineering. We’re probably going to need to do something on ventilation as well, in particular around the air quality and mould and things like that.

So, there’s a whole range of different areas where the experts that are on this call may be interested in getting involved. And steering us in terms of how we’re going to procure it as well, because we’ve not yet decided how we’re going to do it. The key thing that we’re trying to do here is rather than saying Ok, let’s go out and just scan it and produce a BIM model. The big point is why is the BIM model being created? What information is actually going to be needed and who is going to use it? Talking with the different departments within the Council, which is fire, building safety, resident engagement, decarbonisation, so that we can then produce a better brief. And that’s part of what we’re trying to achieve with the Taskforce.

BARRY BASSNETT One of the things I find when we’re asked to do documentation is quite often the client really doesn’t know where to start. They don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what techniques are available, they don’t know what they can do. And this really is we’re trying to use this for ourselves, but also to share the best practice. Things not do to, things you should do in order to make the whole project sustainable. What level of BIM model do we need to do, for example. That is a huge cost implication, depending on what’s required.

So, we’ll be sharing this journey with everybody and just as a journal this is what we did, here’s some videos, this is what we’re doing now. So, if anybody wants to share that put ‘Watney’ in the chat so that we know that you’re interested and then we can share the link with you as we go through. We’d be more than happy to take suggestions as well, because the whole point of this is quite often, I hate the word blue sky thinking, normally the answer to the question is in the room. And we’ve got lots of people here who have expertise in certain fields that we can plug into.

We’re currently working on another project which is to do with something completely different that we’ve not yet talked about. (shares screen). This is a data centre, an old banking headquarters which has now been sold and repurposed. But in this particular area the information that’s required is for the buyer. One of the things that is not talked about is how you can use 360 and asset information as a critical part of the vending process the conveyancing process. if you’re buying a facility you want to know what’s there and you want to know its condition, You want to know how long its life is going to last.

So, an asset register of a property that’s being sold is hugely important and can add millions to the value, or subtract millions to the value, depending on the state of play of all the ME. So, we’ve been doing 360 documentation of this.

GEORGE STEVENSON What we’re looking for on this is people who are interested in getting involved in tagging plant rooms in data centres.

BARRY BASSNETT (shares screen). It’s a plant room, but this is the data centre and there’s a few bits left in it. But critically what people need to know, first they need to know the space and stuff. But it’s all of this sort of assembly about what racking they can put in, what condition it is. Because this adds significantly to the value of the property that people can have a look and see. And what we’re going to do here is compile an asset register for the new owners, so they know exactly what its got. What we’ve done is just on a brief 360 tour, so they can zoom in and look at labels.

GEORGE STEVENSON If you’re interested in getting involved in this, because this is going to be coming out to the market as a project in due course. But you might want to get involved at the moment in looking at, for example, the connectors that are up at the top there. This has all been fitted out, a magnificent facility with the plant rooms that we’ve now got as well. This is the data halls, but we’ve also got the plant rooms.

BARRY BASSNETT Yeah, the plant rooms associated with these data centres are pretty complex beasts. They consist of massive chilling units to cool down, but also on triple emergency power supplies because one of the key things about a data centre is you have to anticipate what power you’re going to need, And you have to buy that power from the power generator supplier, or the power electricity supplier. So, this is just to say that there’s another way of using 360 in asset management. It’s not just about maintenance, it’s in the procurement and vending. And as part and parcel of the contractual negotiations.

Having an asset register and knowing, say for example, can you use this stack? Well, yes, you could, but at the same time is how much room, what facilities, what cooling, what power supply am I going to require in order to operate this. It’s hugely important, it’s not just about the cost of the square footage and the bricks and mortar, it’s about the cost of the plant and this idea of Mean Time Between Failure. How long is this plant going to last before I’m going to have to reinvest in a new generating system? And things like that.

GEORGE STEVENSON And also the energy side of things, What’s happening with this is well is that they are coming up with innovative ways of cooling, rather than using normal air conditioning to be able to do that. And they’re also upgrading it. At the moment it’s 8 megawatts of power and they’re going to be pushing it up to 200 megawatts of power. If you’re interested in data centres put ‘data centre’ in the chat. And the other thing is that if you’ve got projects, as Barry was saying there, what we’re trying to do with Watney Market is make it a collaborative data sharing thing. For example, when we were doing it this morning one of the things I learned, I’ve never seen this before.

When the drone was in the air it was being attacked by seagulls. The pilot was used to that, but it wasn’t something that I was expecting to see. So, these are the sorts of things that we could learn along the way. So, if you’re a landlord or if you’re a contractor that’s actually commissioning a new scan to BIM, then get in touch with us. There may be things that we can share and you can share with us as well, about what you’re doing.

PIERRE VENTER Just a point of competition, in a way. We’ve got two streams of data collection. The first one will be in the design engineering tender construction handover. The other one is what we’re doing at the moment which we’ve been taking about which is when we get to the end of the project, at the handover stage and in to the operations is actually doing the 3D photos etc. My one point that I’d like, because there is very little data actually available for performance, is the first part is if we look at the first stream we are gathering data at the design point and that is then used for early procurement. It’s part of the scheduling and the specification etc, right the way through to the product and the contractor then installs. So there’s a value behind that.

If that’s tied instead of having two streams, is that the other stream is the one that we’re doing now, the 3D collection, I’m going to use the term verification fo the development. So, in other words, the Golden Thread, from the earliest decisions with a record as we go through the model, to the point when the contractor starts putting products in and suggesting products etc. And I would like to see that we actually get some idea of a project type and the kind of efforts and resources that actually go in, in the first stream. In other words, what is that collection actually costing us and what is the value of it? That’s just a sort of how you can actually quantify and qualify which one is the most appropriate.

GEORGE STEVENSON My view, I absolutely agree with you, I don’t think it’s either or. What I’m saying at the moment is that we’re actually doing it, the BIM process, there’s a huge amount of effort goes in to doing it during the BIM process, a big investment. But in many cases the last 20% isn’t being done. And that’s because nobody is paying for it, it’s not clear as to who would produce those as-builts. And therefore because it’s not being done, it may be on some cases, obviously i’ve got no idea what the results of the survey was that we did earlier. But certainly anecdotally I think there’s very few projects where people are actually completing the detailed M&E, for example, there’s a lot of that that’s maintenance. And therefore that information is missing.

I think the 360s, certainly in the case of Multivista and OpenSpace, it’s already been paid for. It's been paid for by the construction teams because what they need is something that’s an accurate record of what’s been installed. Now, why isn’t that being used for as-builts? That’s the point, so I think it’s a no brainer really.

PIERRE VENTER So, there is no two streams, it should be the additional part which is the verification at the end of the scheme which actually gives just confirmation as it’s gone through. We can actually trace those things and see what the, and then get that back as a value.

GEORGE STEVENSON I would just say, it doesn’t have to be at the end though, because Multivista will tell you that they’re doing this, it’s certainly after design, well hopefully, because construction started. But they’re engaged right from the beginning of construction I think, and therefore what is being installed can be verified at the time it’s being installed. So, when you say at the end, it doesn’t mean when the client gets the keys. That’s the beauty of doing it with people like Multivista and OpenSpace, I would say.

PIERRE VENTER So George, the final part is if it’s not at the end, but it’s when the installation has taken place because all of the guarantees and insurances etc all kick off when it’s in place ready to go because it’s now installed. So, it’s something that has this multiple benefit, not just a singular benefit of one party.

GEORGE STEVENSON A very good point.

RICHARD FREER OK, Ive just got a quick one out of the chat. George, Theo said you showed earlier using AI to extract data off your PDF forms and put them in to your database. Was the data extraction manual or automated? If automated, how did you do it?

GEORGE STEVENSON I think it’s certainly semi-automated. It’s a matter of identifying what data you need and then using a variety of mechanisms, methods to do it. So, there’s a level of data engineering and some of that is supported by AI. There is nothing at the moment that completely automates the process and the Ai just magically does it. But we’re really impressed with what’s been achieved.

What we’re actually doing is tying together information that, quite frankly, should have been tied together, I’m sure Pierre would say this. We should have schedules that have got reference numbers on them that relate to the drawings and they should all be connected up. But what we’ve been able to do is to retrospectively do that, which I think is a big step forward. We’re not the only ones that are doing it, that’s really what I’m saying, we can learn from each other on this.

PAUL OAKLEY George, it was more I than AI that was doing it. It was intelligence of myself and Tim writing document applications and things to scroll through thousands of documents to pull the information out. And that was a lot of what we did.

GORDON PRINGLE I think we’re kind of going back to the silo mentality of the phase of construction in the RIBA 7 stages. And certainly your point earlier on about design being concluded, and I speak from a distributor and specialist MEP equipment that’s supplied into the construction industry and contracting industry. They want to leave that to the lastminute.com to get the best price and they want to try and value engineer to put product substitution into that process. And where does that fit in it that chain? And how do they validate that to go into a construction design as-fitted drawing?

We often, subsequent to procurement, revisit those sites and ask for the as-fitteds, ask for the schematics, ask for an understanding of what the installation is like. And we more than numerous times, like too frequently, the as-fitted drawings are not a true reflection of the constructed asset. Now, just imagine that presently as a 2D aspect and we’re talking about a 360 or a 3D or a kind of spatial conception. Or the models that you talked about earlier on. There needs to be a seismic change in attitudes to the construction industry, and potentially to do the design industry, and I’m offering out there to the whole sector, the whole audience here.

I’m seeing improvement on that. I’m seeing pressure coming from the areas that you’ve talked about in this end that the investment institutions that own the buildings are now seeing snippets of all of the good work that’s being done by everybody here on the digital data capture side of things to validate the efficiency of the asset. And they’re now forcing, or trying to put considerable strain on the construction industry. But the construction industry, in my opinion, just moves at such pace that it can’t get up to speed with that. It can’t pause everything to try and change the way that it’s been working for 30 or 40 years. It just wants to try and readjust, but that takes one hell of a time to readjust.

In my opinion, and that could just be my opinion. But I know there’s other people in the audience that think can contribute to that process from an MEP side. And the other thing I’d like to say, I don’t know how many contractors we’ve got in this process at the moment. We’ve got 100-odd people in here, but I’d be delighted to hear that we’ve got at least 15-20% contractors. I think we’ve got service providers that are all trying and motivated to change this process. But I don’t think we’re actually getting engagement with them, they’re not coming in and talking to us about their issues. But maybe I’m just a grumpy old man in that regard.

RICHARD FREER I’ve got a couple of questions from the chat. Mohammad has said is there a session to talk about asset management for infrastructure projects? Do we get involved in that, George? Should we?

GEORGE STEVENSON I think possibly that’s, certainly we’re interested in that. The principles are common, but some of the detail is different.

RICHARD FREER So, that’s a yes, but not now kind of thing.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, I think so. We can discuss it. I think at the moment maybe buildings within infrastructure is probably the key thing. If Mohammad has got a project that we could then perhaps look at, that might be a worthwhile thing.

RICHARD FREER Mohammad, have you got a specific project in mind?

MOHAMMAD We have in Qatar.

GEORGE STEVENSON So, by all means, let’s discuss it Mohammad. We’ve got some people in the Taskforce from Bentley who do a lot on infrastructure. So, it may be useful to bring some of those people in as well.

RICHARD FREER Another one from the chat, Andrew Simpson said our challenge is supporting clients with asset requirements and what is really needed, including COBie (and format), NBS/SFG20, FireIE (BSA), carbon data, maintenance info, tagging, etc. Is there a session or group reviewing these aspects?

PAUL OAKLEY George, it’s asking basically about the asset information requirements and what the work that we did initially setting things out, on FireIE. There’s various work that’s already been carried out on that, on defining specific asset requirements. So, the HACKT list that we have which went through all of the things for BIM4Housing in terms of typical asset types within housing, the classifications, use of Uniclass, use of IFC, mapping to SFG20 and those sorts of things. They were all included as part of the work that we undertook from that, right at the beginning.

GEORGE STEVENSON I’ve just read it and that’s definitely something that I’ve been talking with…it’s definitely something that Matt Wilkie is interested in as well. So yes, that’s part of what we’re doing.

RICHARD FREER Is it worth having a chat, a one-to-one with Andrew?

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely, I’ll pick up on that.

ANDREW SIMPSON Thanks very much, George, a lot of the projects are mainly can be educational, universities, other commercial officers and government projects. I’m based in Sunderland, the North-East and Scotland region, that’s where our projects are. I’m from Bowmer and Kirkland.

BARRY BASSNETT One of the interesting things and the question why is really, really important. But one of the things that we’re going to do at Watney Market is actually doing exactly this. Why do we need this information? So, if you want to keep up to speed with this why do you need this information it’s going to be supercritical to all the stakeholders. And I think the Watney Market might be a useful sandpit for us to ask these questions why and try to establish what really is required going into the future. There is no point getting data that no one is every going to use.

So, I think it’s a really good point, Andrew. Watney Market, one of the prime reasons for doing that is to ask this question and go through the process of what do you need, what does the client need, and try and anticipate what it’s going to need in 5 or 10 years time. Not at the end of the construction process.

ANDREW SIMPSON That's a good question, Barry, because we've got a potential project where the owner will actually own the project for 50 years. Who knows what's going to happen in 50 years time when they hand it back over?

BARRY BASSNETT Well, exactly, and you’re looking at decommissioning and looking at 50 years ago we wouldn’t have gone with asbestos if we’d thought about it. Who knows what’s going to come out of the woodwork in 50 years time. One of the whole points of the process that we’re going through here is it’s really important to get the right information in a sustainable way. There’s no point getting information and no one is ever going to use it, because that’s expensive.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think the other interesting thing, Andrew, is if you’re talking about working on schools, it’s a very interesting area that we’ll have a specific conversation on. As you saw maybe at the beginning, we said that we want to do something on schools specifically. Because as Active Plan we’ve been involved in a schools programme substantially for the last 15 years.

We’ve not been involved actively over the last 7 or 8 years, but it is something that we’re interested in picking up on now because the problem is there’s been a fundamental disconnect between the department, the user of the building and who’s responsible for all of the information. And the DfE has done a good job in creating a set of information requirements, but `i’m not sure how practical it is in terms of people using it.

ANDREW SIMPSON That’s a good point George, because a lot of our designers and other contractors ask what are they going to do with all of this information. It’s information overload, we don’t know yet.

GEORGE STEVENSON If anybody else on the call is interested in schools, if you put ‘schools’ in, because there’s some specific things we could do on schools that’s relevant. Either new builds like Andrew is talking about there, or indeed I know that in September Plowman Craven are going to do a session on work that they’re doing for decarbonisation on schools. So, that’s the sort of thing, if you’re interested in schools then put ‘schools’ in and we can do something together on that.

RICHARD FREER OK, so let’s do a quick reminder on groups to join. Within BIM4Housing we’ve got design, development, operations, and the BIM4Housing BIM In Asset Management consultancy group. We’ve got safety critical assets, including specifically fire doors, but put ‘safety critical’ into the chat. We’re running workshops throughout the summer, come to all or some, in PFI, put ‘PFI’ in the chat. Data engineering and AI, put ‘data’ in the chat. As-built models, if you’re interested in that put ‘as-built’ in the chat.

We’ve got a project, running workshops on specific projects that we can share information with each other about. put ‘projects’ in the chat. And lastly, the Golden Thread Taskforce, put ‘GTT’ or ‘Golden Thread’ in the chat for more information about that. And if you want to talk with any a couple of our members in a 15-minute chat, put ‘one-to-one’.

GEORGE STEVENSON If you’ve got a question that you’re not sure about if you’ve got a question that you’d like to ask the group, if you could message us with it we’ll try and get in included in maybe the next survey, maybe earlier. We may be able to answer those questions. We’re also meeting, we meet every morning at 8.30am for a drop-in. So, if you’re interested in engaging in that in some way, then you can drop in and ask questions.

Richard and I probably don’t know the answers, but we almost certainly will know someone who does. So, if you’re interested in just dropping in of a morning at 8.30, just for half an hour, the that might be a thing worth doing. So, if you’re interested in drop-in, put ‘drop-in’ in the chat and we’ll send you a link to do that.

RICHARD FREER A great meeting, as usual, we’ll see you all either in the workshops or in September for our next forum.

CHAT

Pierre Venter (External)…. Scotsman will be Kilt in the heat!

Andy Cumberpatch (External)….. Not myself but we have a fire damper team and a fire door team. I will send the information on to the teams

victor snook (External)… Hi All, I am putting together an asset register from different industry examples and best practice. Would this forum have an asset register example I could review? Could I also have access to the Miro board? Many thanks.

bernard hornung (External)…. Safety Assets with a particular emphasis upon quantifying air loss through fire doors.

Alex Bauer - Multivista (External)… We produce the as built information (2d photos, laser scanning etc) so assuming I shouldn't fill this out?

Gordon Pringle (External)… As a manufacturers technical distributor I’ll decline from the poll but have thoughts of contractors requests for IOM and active BIM data post procurement.
victor snook (External)… What platform did they use to link all of the data?

Alex Bauer - Multivista (External) …Do you know how it was scanned and accuracy of data (tolerances etc)? Did they scan just at P/C and if so how can they evidence that there aren't any deviations or clashes to make it a true as built?

bernard hornung (External)….. We are capturing visible information, and we must also capture invisible information, such as air loss, and that is what I am able to offer with precision.

Alex Bauer - Multivista (External)…. Multivista are using A.I. to provide an automated firestopping assessment on both existing estates and new builds if anyone on the call is interested feel free to reach out
Pierre Venter (External)… George Stevenson I would like to add a alternate view to the End of Construction/Post Construction documentation, recording assets - strategy & methodology.

Chandan Sutradhar (External)… can we get the presentation

Andrew Simpson (External)…. How do you join the consulting group? Sorry could not join until 20past if I missed anything

Alex Bauer - Multivista (External)… They usually make bee lines for them.. mostly during nesting seasons and why we fly early mornings lots of times during those periods

Obayori Theo (External)… Hi George, you showed earlier using AI to extract data off your PDF forms and put them into your database. Was the data extraction manual or automated? If automated, how did you do it?

mohammad (Guest) (Unverified)… Hi George , is there a session to talk about the asset management for infrastructure projects

Ruben Romero Vivancos (External)… machine learning from schedules or forms completed as examples, and finding regular expressions in pdfs

Andrew Simpson (External)…. Thanks for this George and everyone. Our challenge is supporting clients with asset requirements and what is REALLY needed, including COBie (and format), NBS/SFG20, Fire.ie (BSA), carbon data, maintenance info, tagging, etc. Is there a session or group reviewing these aspects? Also challenging some clients to see WHY it is required.

Dumitru Minciu (External)…. RADS - Road Asset Data Structure from Australia I looked on it
Subhodip Poddar…Does there Digital Twin will be an option to talk about?

Matt Wilkie (External).. The data is used between so many different stakeholders but too often only interested in their slice of the data. Hence the importance of getting the information into a back and forth rather than taking mentality.

Steven Duffy (External)…. Further to Gordon's point - It is critical that the Building Owner ensures the EIR and BEP are written in such a way to ensure suitable asset information and drawings are handed over correctly and costed into the project to be provided. If not written correctly or mandated, the main contractor/developer is not interested from my experience to hand over accurate information as they haven't costed for it. Much more emphasis needs to be placed on this and ensure these requirements are not removed or value engineered out.

Obayori Theo (External)… Sorry I have to drop off now. Great session, thanks George/Richard!

I work with a developer/main contractor called HB Reavis and we've been exploring some practical applications of Data, AI agents and automation...can be a very lonely journey - feel free to connect with me on Linkedin!
David Simpson (External).. Schools - we're working on several projects on the DfE CF21 framework for several different contractor clients. Each contractor is free to use their own process to produce the COBie and IFC deliverables, which leads to confusion amongst the design and deliver teams.

Paul Woddy (External).. Do you have a specific working group looking at upskilling and education, or does that run across all the streams? If so, how do you coordinate this?