BIM IN ASSET MANAGEMENT MONTHLY FORUM 22-01-2025
CHRIS CRAGGS Just continuing the comments we just made there, the peculiar feature of this is that this aspect or parameter of assets, be it fire detection systems or lifts or anything else, did not exist in the procurement phase. This feature of a million pounds a month or £300,000 a month or disruption was not a characteristic that anybody was bothered about, perhaps in the early days when it was being specified but no part during the construction was this an amount of interest. it only appears as a really important and currently neglected parameter at the point of handover when somebody is actually trying to use the thing and it’s now dangerous and you need a waking watch and so forth. So, I think for this reason it has not been perhaps investigated before and I’ll let Terence run through the presentation, but I think I’ve raised this before in meetings for the last 10 years.
I think one of the blockers to getting BIM properly utilised in asset management in the operational phase of construction and why it might be different from the old fashioned O&M manuals which were neglected 30 seconds after they were left on the facilities manager’s shelf, is that if we can measure some of these impacts that starts to drive behaviour. Because now we have the million pounds a month cost, goodness me, we’d better make sure these things are repaired very, very quickly. Historically there was no way of correlating the O&M manual with that cost, with the capture of data there absolutely is. So, I’d like to think this may be the enabler for this whole subject matter. It’s a bit of a grand statement, but I genuinely believe it has that potential.
TERENCE HORSMAN Thank you, Chris, and I love the example George, around the £300,00 a month…eye-watering amounts. What we’re trying to do is quantify that impact into parameters that we can store against asset records and if we can come up with a standard-based approach around this I think it could truly be revolutionary in the industry. Some examples I want to run through, we worked with Chris on this particular project evaluating the impact of ice cream machines going down for Burger King in Saudi Arabia. And actually finding that the majority of their machines were out of service and they can serve up to 50 customers an hour, significant impact in terms of lost revenue and sales and reputation.
CHRIS CRAGGS Just to throw a statistic in there, in this particular one Burger King in Riyadh that was lost revenue of $900,000 as a result of machines not being operational. So it is, again, stratospheric, OK, ice cream machines are slightly exceptional, they are very significant when you’ve totted it up across and estate. And you may be aware that McDonald’s have this notoriety for their machines not working and it’s the lost revenue. So, on the one hand it’s cost, on the other hand it’s lost revenue.
GORDON PRINGLE I think the point is very valid that everybody makes that data and visible data sometimes up line of the FM industry or the site-based engineer determines that operational efficiency or operational performance is massively impacted by deviation from something that was expected to perform that doesn’t. And that goes for so many sectors in my sector which is building services. So, the hidden stuff that’s up in the ceiling that heats and cools your building or provides hot water, but when it doesn’t, by God, there’s all hell let loose. So, it just emphasises exactly what everybody has been saying and even before we joined the meeting what George and Richard were talking about, to say we do have people that are fundamentally trying to change things.
I’m not sure that the construction industry can achieve that when they press the button in a construction chain in a contractual obligation to build something if it’s not been in design. So therefore if we go back to the process of BIM in operational management and maintenance it’s implicit that the designers embrace best practice and see the evidence of that. But I’m not sure, I’ve been in this industry for 43 years, but I’m telling you the designers are not embracing best practice innovative technology. Now, some of that is kind of self equalising because they hate to embrace technology and new stuff because it scares them. Human nature being what it is, it scares them, but where do we really understand the main benefits is when we start getting hit with these £300,000 or £1,000.000 costs and they don’t get covered up.
Because a lot of these costs get covered up because the political scene, the construction contractors don’t want anybody having knowledge that they’re actually paying that kind of sum out, particularly if the tax payer is paying for it.
TERENCE HORSMAN I share the sentiment there and here is another example of one of those business critical pieces of infrastructure, an HVAC unit providing clean air to operating theatres for the NHS. Now we’re not talking about financial impact but there could be risk of life, for example, and certain business critical assets will be so safety critical that it might lead to operations being moved, this could have significant impact. So how do we evaluate that level of impact for those different types of assets? Clearly very different type of use cases. We’re thinking about creating a model which is fed with parameters that can be evaluated and that can guide a user either in the design phase or in the operational phase to evaluate what this impact would be if that particular asset being disrupted.
It could be a compliance risk, legislative impact, operational, it could be lost revenues, opportunity costs associated with it. But even things like environmental impact carbon footprint, we know that ESG is very important to everyone it’s on everyone’s agenda, reputational damage to your brand. We’re not saying that this is the be all and end all, but we’re trying to create a model to encapsulate that level of information. So, once we have those parameters mapped out the idea is that we then subsequently quantify that in some form of scale. And the weighting might be determined based on your particular business needs for the criticality of that asset, so if compliance is deemed to be more important to your industry then you might give that a higher weight, for example. And this would allow us to evaluate the impact against these assets in a normalised way, even though we’re talking about completely separate types of assets.
Once that impact has been evaluated which is I think very common practice when we’re talking about risk management, how do we then quantify that even further in terms of pounds, shillings and pence? So, what are the opportunity costs? What is the price of an ice cream? What is the cost of that reputational damage? Start to calculate what that looks like and that £300,000 a month charge might be a cost that you’re putting in here and that might further emphasise the impact of that particular asset going down. And I think it gives asset managers in the operational phase and the design phase a better insight into what type of, perhaps, maintenance regimes you want to put in place, what types of business continuity measures you want to put in place, further enriching the data that we already have in our BIM systems and asset management systems.
We’re evaluating this across a number of different types of occupiers, whether that’s office space, whether that’s factory, airport, retail, housing. And we’d love to make this work for all types of assets that people have within buildings. Another challenge that we foresee is, well, great if let’s say we do this at the design phase or at the delivery phase of a building, but clearly this needs to be data that lives and gets updated regularly. And one of the things we haven’t really figured out is Ok, who governs that type of data? Who is responsible for updating that data and reviewing it on a periodic basis? And if we get specialist contractors involved, facility management companies involved, and they subcontract works out, how do these specialist organisations still feed data back?
I think, most importantly, what’s the incentive for these specialists as well to maintain those records? Are they rewarded or, perhaps, penalised if we don’t update it, does it turn into a health & safety hazard? It feeds into O&M records, it feeds into golden threads as well. Having some form of framework and industry best practice around how we keep this up-to-date, how we audit this are all questions that we wish to discuss with a wider form of experts. And as Chris alluded to before, that return on effort is really important, designing these type of parameters filling in this data in a normalised way takes time, but if you can prove the ROI on that I think it turns into a really interesting business case.
So, we’d love to explore your thoughts and your ideas, this is an initial approach that we’re putting on the table and we’re actually organising a call on the 7th of February to continue talks around this. So, we’re looking for subject matter experts to join in the conversation and contribute to this working group so that we can come up with a model that works in a variety of different sectors.
GEORGE STEVENSON If you’ve got something to contribute to that or if you’re interested in understanding more about quantifying the impact of asset failure, please just put your name in the chat under ‘impact’. Has anybody got any comments now?
STEWART PARKER Terence, it’s good that you should mention what’s available and how we measure and what we look at how. Does anybody actually use the MOR or the VOR at the moment? The mandatory occurrence reporting system that the government has got in place. Or the system that it’s got for voluntary occurrence reporting.
GEORGE STEVENSON Let’s ask the people that are on the call from councils and housing associations, has anybody got involved in that yet?
STEWART PARKER What I mean by this is that the mandatory occurrence reporting, the way that that system works, if we see a problem especially with passive and active fire section in buildings, if we rely on facilities managers or we rely on the landlord. We made a point there about it’s budgets sometimes and what they want to repair, sometimes we’re fighting fires with other services. What I tend to see, and I have to report it as part of an audit, for instance, if I see a system that maybe has several critical components in it, if two of those life critical components are faulty then ultimately it almost deems the rest of the system as faulty. So sometimes we see where we just go and repair, for instance, if you have 4 tires on your car and they’re going bald and one is balder that the other, does it make it right just to repair that one tire?
And especially in what we see in buildings services, sometimes that’s all they can do because of their budgets, but I don’t think we should shy away from the fact of that reporting that Terence has said. If we have a robust reporting system at least we know that it’s been looked at and it doesn’t get forgotten because that is what I’ll see a lot of the times. I’ll do an annual test on a building and at one time prior to the Building Safety Act and the building safety regulations it was being reported, and it was an advisory and, well, it’s a mandatory now. And that’s where the mandatory occurrence reporting comes in. So, you can report it, it’s logged, it’s there and then they have to act on it in a certain amount of time. Just because we say oh, you’ve got 12 months to repair that item, well, something could go wrong the very next day.
Unfortunately for me I see it from both sense. I see it in a nuclear facility where they will act immediately and do that there and then. Then we get to the NHS, it’s very poor at the moment, where they can’t just act on everything you say. Do you understand that side of it? So, we do need somewhere where we have to enforce it and unfortunately I think the NHS has suffered the consequences because I’ve not been to many facilities in my industry where they are compliant. And it goes back to not being policed correctly at the beginning. But where we have the maintenance guys now from the facilities, especially from the FM side of things, all of these maintenance guys are now becoming educated because of the big push down with compliance and being competent to do your job. The guys are actually reading the books and they’re finding a whole host of historical problems now, so all of a sudden there’s something they didn’t recognise last year…
MARK KEEBLE Stewart, there are lots and lots of questions in there and it’s really good information that you’re giving us, but there’s a lot of data and I think we need to backtrack about four minutes because there’s so much good stuff in there that you said. Just to pick up on one point that you said and this is a common problem that we see across the high-risk building industry. The issue you raised is because organisations have very poor safety management systems. So, safety management systems, your processes procedures of how you manage safety in context of risk to life with key performance indicators with regular meetings with accountable people. And this is where all of the data is triaged, where the MORs are reviewed, and then the understanding of risk is defined to prioritise what needs to be fixed.
So, the answer to your question is a robust safety management system and 90% of councils, housing associations, private landlords that we work with do not have one. So, that’s my answer to you and I could go on all day about quantification of risk.
HOWARD HALL My one comment would be we’ve got to be a bit careful here that at the moment there’s within the industry everyone is pushing back on the Building Safety Act because there has been no enforcement, the HSE are quite slow at the moment because of resourcing and actually enforcing, and therefore there is a bit of a laissez faire attitude as to how it applies and where it applies, Mandatory reporting is based upon the accountable or the PAP responsibility, therefore if we are suppliers or suppliers to assist the PAP we’ve got to be careful we don’t alienate them with a system or reporting. That it gives them the right information so that we can demonstrate from our service provision point of view that we’re actually assisting them in their direct accountability.
Profiling risk is really good, it’s only going to be one of the risks and it may not be their predominate risk, but provided we’ve got a system that within the asset management aspect that we can identify what are the business critical aspects, business critical systems and any faults with them. It will then allow them to take whatever political or risk-based view that they need to take, but we as service providers can at least demonstrate that we’ve acted reasonably and with due care and attention. And the problem that you’ve got is there is a growing feeling at the moment that a lot of people are ignoring the Building Safety Act and until we get a decent prosecution coming through we don’t want to be forcing extra responsibility without giving them the means of identifying what that risk is and helping them to quantify it.
This is a brilliant idea and I really endorse it. I think what we need to do is make sure that it’s not seen as a hammer but it’s seen as a leverage point in helping them to understand.
RICHARD FREER Let me explain, this impact workstream follows on and is part of the business case workstream. We’ve already done a lot of propositioning work which will be published over the next couple of weeks. This is kind of phase 2, phase 3 of that which is actually getting down to the nitty gritty and putting some figures behind it which I think we’ll all be very grateful to see.
DAVID HILLS Three issues, I agree wholeheartedly with Mark, nobody has building safety management systems in place even though it is a very clear requirement within the law. I totally agree with Howard, we’ve got very poor enforcement, but if you just read the article in CIOB magazine relating to what Dame Judith Hackitt suggests the actual industry is like, she says it has an appalling attitude to the whole process. And the last thing I wanted to mention, Terence in his presentation talked about we haven’t figured out the governance requirements. Well, in HRBs we have, the law is very, very clear. The governance has to be undertaken by the accountable person and the principal accountable person. And they can’t argue with that, that’s enshrined within the law.
EMEKA OSAJI Regarding compliance and enforcement, there are two ways to go about it. One obviously is punitive, but with a carrot sometimes you have to go with a stick and vice versa. The other alternative is to spotlight exemplary practice, so role models. So, find where people are actually doing things right and probably going above and beyond. Begin the catalogue the evidence based on baselining and benchmarking so we begin to get evidence of relatable areas where people have actually found ways to overcome issues and perhaps lend that good or best practice to those who are coming after them to try their hands at overcoming those hurdles also.
GEORGE STEVENSON That’s exactly what we would like people to do in these forum meetings and also afterwards. So, if you’ve got examples of things that are working, rather than just things that aren’t working, that would be fantastic in you could share them.
RICHARD FREER I’m going to move on to the aforementioned Matt Wilkie to tell us all about what he and Richard Bacon will be doing in the PFI handover working group.
MATT WILKIE I wanted to do a little presentation on some of the issues that are specific to PFI normally, but it sounds like you have a lot of it from the build transfer anyway, so some of them will appear quite relevant. Part of what we’ve been looking at on the PFI, it will be multi-folder, I think we’ll have some development from the discussions that will occur with people coming into the group. Because I’ve got it from one angle, but somebody will have a different perspective or a different problem from something that they’re dealing with and what we’re trying to do is get it from cradle to grave with documentation processes, methodologies, terminologies etc so everything is sort of aligned. And also it will be a good opportunity to go through problems and solutions.
The presentation is the cost of poor asset data in PPP and PFI contracts, addressing the gaps and avoiding financial and operational risk. The objective is to highlight the critical issues arising from poor asset data in PFI and PPP contracts to demonstrate the financial, operational and compliance risks that are associated. Overview is a high level view of PFI PPP contracts and the reliance on accurate asset data because one of the big problems in the realms of PFI and PPP is bad data. The importance of addressing these challenges early in the contract life cycle because the longer they fester the worse it gets. One of the key ones is incomplete financial models. When a lot of these are put together they’re built on BCIS which are very high level, so it may have a budget for an engineer HVAC, another budget for some fabric, another budget…
So, they’re not broken down to elemental, they’re elemental but at very high level. This results in unrecognised financial gaps that only become evident halfway through the contracts when budgets tighten. That’s normally when I get involved and they’re starting to see that the budgets aren’t matching the actual contract length as more expenditures start to turn up that may be completely missing from the model. I normally find things like fire doors are a problem, fire dampers, fire stopping. But also if they’re not showing in the model how does anybody ever look at them as a problem? Example: a contract assumes standard asset costs for HVAC but lacks actual asset breakdown leading to underestimated life cycle costs.
That I see quite a lot on NHS contracts because you can end up with some specialist equipment in there and it’s had a benchmark cost based on a finger in the air and it’s not actually related to the specifics like theatre ventilation systems. So, you’re dealing with HEPA filters, higher maintenance etc and it may not even be factored in on the original costs. The impact is a strain on budget, delay in addressing issues and it becomes financially critical as things start to fail. The solution is detailed asset validation and financial comparison at conception. So, basically at the start of the contract the analysis should take place there and not normally where I come in where about 15 years down the line where money is getting tight and assets are failing everywhere.
Neglected PPMs and surveys is failure to carry out preventative maintenance. As I said earlier, if the assets don’t exist there is a good chance they’re not going to get maintained, valves is a very common one, fire doors, fire stopping. And normally a lot of these things get looked as the buildings have gone out of their builders defect period. Fire doors are only inspected after a significant failures, roof surveys overlooked leading to warranty avoidance with issues arise. For example, you may not be replacing the roof but the warranty may actually deem that it needs an inspection periodically and if there is no evidence of that there’s no warranty. The impact, increased life cycle costs due to deferred maintenance, compliance risks, voided warranties.
Solutions, implement a robust period survey and PPM regime during a contract life cycle, use warranties and defect liability periods pro-actively to address construction issues. Like I say, they’re normally left to the last year in too many contracts. Variations not being tracked, lack of tracking for asset variations leads to uncharged replacements and missing maintenance charges which obviously puts strain on everything. Assets replaced by contracts without charge tracking results in gaps in maintenance obligations and running costs. Impact financial leakage and operational inefficiencies, lack of accountability for asset performance and replacement schedules. Solution, develop a variated tracking system within the CAFM and other tools.
It is a major one, to be fair, because trying to unpick it ten years down the line when you’ve got an extra 150 aircon units and nobody knows when they were installed, who installed them, but bizarrely are all in the contract, just not written in it. Because that goes back to the BCIS model where they were never broken down. So the solution is to develop the CAFM, regular audits to ensure asset changes are documented, charged and included in maintenance schedules. I’m a big believer in 360 surveys for this so you can do it annually so it can’t be challenged at a later date. Consequences of poor asset data, financial, budget overruns, financial strain, inefficient allocation of life cycle budgets. Operational, increased down time and reactive maintenance, compromised building functionality.
Compliance, risk of non-compliance with regulatory requirements, safety hazards due to neglected maintenance. And there’s a couple of recommendations to finish on. Immediate actions, conduct comprehensive asset surveys, establish a robust data management system for the assets PPMs and variations, integrate regular surveys and maintenance into the contract lifecycle. Long term strategies, align financial models with real-world asset data, leverage technology like IoT and BIM to monitor and manage these assets. And a really important one is foster the collaboration between stakeholders to ensure accountability and proactive decision making. Because one of the problems you get is the challenges between different parties. So, at the end of it if you’ve suddenly got a problem with the roof the first thing an SPV or local authority will do is prove that it was maintained, yet there was no requirement to maintain it.
So, there’s a lot of strange things that occur, you think that’s common sense, of course it gets maintained, but it doesn’t. And a lot of the issues that you find on roofs maybe, for example, HVAC equipment being lifted on and off breaking the membrane, the issues aren’t picked up. Is there any questions on that?
RICHARD FREER Matt, you’re focusing your working group on PFI handover, is that correct?
MATT WIKLIE I think it will be PFI handovers, it’s PFI PPP, so it’s fairly expansive because there’s things like change of usage and other bits and pieces, it all depends where the group wants to steer it.
CHRIS MILLING I’m just going to ask how many building operators have asset management systems which can actually take the data which you want to capture. I briefly worked at L&Q and when you got a handover sheet it would be at the level of how many lifts have you got on calls and the like. So, you have the data, it is all important, but then you go and handover a building, people don’t say these are the systems, these are the lists and these are the parts of the lists which we want to know. Because all of these standards document stuff that where you hand it over to somebody they don’t have the ability to store it anywhere. So, they’ll take the document, they’ll put it in their document management system and then years down the line somebody searching for a document because they haven’t actually…
RICHARD FREER Right, digital handover and technical submissions. Paul Oakley, where are we and where are we going?
PAUL OAKLEY Talk about digital handovers and including of the O&Ms and other bits and pieces. Traditional O&Ms, generally they tend to be work package based. We had Rattigans presenting last time about what they were doing, they were actually using a systems-based approach, but traditionally most contractors because of the way they commercially let it the O&Ms tend to follow the commercials in terms of doing it by work packages. When we look at what they’re talking about in terms of requirements for the golden thread etc, they talk about considering the building as a single system and then break down on a system-based approach. So, it would make more sense from an asset management point of view at least, to be requiring O&Ms to be delivered on a system basis as opposed to on a work package basis.
A lot of the people involved in producing O&Ms have lots of different ways of dealing with content. So, another area is looking at how in terms of standardise the content that is to be delivered within O&Ms. We’ve produced this with one of our clients, a big asset management company. But again, the issue there is quite often the contractors have already settled the requirements for the O&Ms when they’ve pushed out the work packages early in the project. So actually even though the asset managers have a requirement, that requirement isn’t carried down to the subcontractors who are producing the O&Ms. So again, there needs to be that clear definition from the asset management teams in terms of how and what they want the O&Ms and that needs to be put in to initial contracts early on the ensure that the information is provided in the format that meets them. And this is an area that really needs to be looked at and discussed further.
Things like standardised folder structures in terms of how are we going to deal with the data. Again, that’s a work in progress area that needs to be picked up. The content, a lot of what I’m involved with is going through O&Ms and COBie and stuff like that and the subcontractors basically just provide the minimum delivery. And it’s things like for locations it’ll say it’s on all floors or it’s not known or it’s in the building. It’s absolutely useless in terms of when you’re trying to find a particular element, a particular main shut off valve for the building, and it’s in the building somewhere. They reference as-seen drawings which are not provided. Again, there are reference documents that don’t exist, but the reality is nobody is checking or validating this stuff. And this is one of the problems that i’ve got is that a lot of the work that I’m involved with 8is going through checking and validating that and actually finding that these things don’t really exist.
Models and drawings, another big areas in terms of the models are often incomplete and don’t include the things that need to be done. Things like when they’re using solutions such as Revit, quite often the designers or contractors basically have skewed the views. Views are things like sections, the elevations, the plans, so you’ve just got a generic 3D model, but you’ve got no floor views. And then the sheets, the sheets produce the drawings which go out which could be things like the fire strategy drawings and they’ve deleted those from the models. So, if the client needs to update those fire strategy drawings they have no way of doing that, except for creating the whole thing from scratch having updated the models. And even then basic things like, Revit has a thing called a central model and then links are done through UNC, all of these sorts of things create all sorts of basic issues in terms of putting together the models in useful format.
Things like drawings are actually just either a scan or a photograph and then marked up with sometimes crayon by the looks of it. They’re not accurate, not reflecting what is actually as-built. I’ve had ones with status of work in progress provided as an as-built. Not following the standard requirements, they’re not identified as record drawings. And then the other thing is they may update their particular aspects of a file, but they haven’t referenced other drawings or models which have been as-built. So, the architect may do his bit, but the structural engineering mechanical is not the as-built information before they put it out. So actually you need a complete referenced set of documents together to provide the actual as-builts. And again, the rarity is there is very few people checking and validating the stuff that’s produced.
COBie, the amount of times that we’ve seen things where the COBie doesn’t match the O&Ms because it’s either produced from design or construction models which then haven’t been updated and the subcontractors have made changes from those. The data is not sufficient within them, basic things like Revit doesn’t actually hold the contract requirements you need for things like manufacturers. Quite often they’ll just cheat and put the supplier or the subcontractors name, you don’t get the real manufacturer and model number serial numbers again. There’s no process for capturing those and dealing with those. And then it’s how do you deal with the whole non-model types and components, again very few subcontractors have processes for dealing with those. Warranties, they’ll just put the defects liability period, so you’re not getting the real manufacturer’s warranty. So, when it gets handed over from the main contractor the clients that then start running the buildings actually have got no real warranty information on those.
Again, the whole things are not checked and validated while the industry has been getting on with this. We’ve talked about PTSs in terms of the processes there, in terms of how we can link those and then into sort of type information. And then the group looking at standardised PTSs where we could be pulling through automatically from the models. Things like the design and product specification and populating this part of the sheet, or things that are not modelled, how that could be put in. We can go through the whole define with the requirements side of things and then mapping that against what was actually installed. And this again, a lot of the issues that I’ve had looking at O&Ms and COBie and things like this is even where we have PTSs, sometimes the PTSs are saying something completely different than what we’ve got within the COBie or within the O&Ms. So again, these can provide an opportunity to standardise the data that is then used through the O&Ms and the COBie data extraction, the approval date of those things.
So, I’ve just thrown a load of stuff at you in terms of loads of issues and stuff that really needs to be discussed and sorted out. These I think in terms of the methodology, in terms of the approach, in terms of whether they should be using systems-based etc, all of these other things we need to consider.
GEORGE STEVENSON And we’ve got a meeting on the 3rd of February for us to bring together people that are interested in this. Waites are actively involved in it and we’ve got other main contractors like Bouygues and Rattigans involved as well.
NICHOLAS NISBET Paul, did you look at any of the existing standards? I believe BSRIA have got a standard content and layout of O&M manuals and there was the ONSI? 42mins 6secs standard from the US Navy. And I’m sure there have been other attempts to standarise the format and layout.
PAUL OAKLEY Yeah, we went through a whole series of looking at commercially available and standards and discussed stuff with the HSE, so we’ve been through that whole process. But again, it’s work in progress because it needs industry input into that.
STEWART PARKER Paul, allowances for Category B fit-outs, so where we have a new build and then you have multiple clients have a Category B fit-out because that can really throw the documents out of place.
PAUL OAKLEY Yeah, again, there’s some stuff there that needs to be, how you pick up the change mechanisms from things…or things that go wrong and 6-month defects. That whole sort of stuff needs to be incorporated into this process somehow.
RICHARD FREER Let’s move on to Barry Bassnett who has been using 360 photography for years to speed up asset capture.
BARRY BASSNETT My background is I’m sort of like a gamekeeper rather than a poacher, so I normally work with the asset owners to help identify how they can manage the information in their portfolio, their assets, but obviously we’re talking to your community on a daily basis. And there’s lots of ways you can record the information, but one of the easier ways is to use 360 imagery. OK, it’s not going to give you correct geometry, but as a visual asset for what we call visual asset management it gives us a whole slew of different tools which are very easy to use. And one of the problems that I find is often there’s a very narrow gap, a very narrow field that people really need this information for and it’s generally set up into user dashboard. So, you’ll have one for procurement and facilities management and then you’ll have other groups like operations, maintenance and safety who have different requirements for the data. And what we find is the only way it works is if you can deliver relevant information to that particular user.
And then, of course, there is the overriding thing for the asset manager. What we find is 360 imagery is a really easy way to document variations, document things over a period of time. Because it’s really simple, we can train someone up to use a 360 camera in pretty well every lighting condition in half an hour and that by itself gives an incredible tool that can be used to populate information. so what happens often we find is the asset owner is looking at a particular use case, whether that’s we’ve talked about with fire safety, fire safety cases, or we’re looking at all sorts of different things, whether it’s to do with maintenance history where are the warranty information. And that will normally come out as a request and that will go out to a surveyor, a field technician, who will walk around and do the data capture. And then there’s a couple of things that we can use then like geotagging information, where is this photograph of in the building, or externally for infrastructure.
How do we do that, couple that up with QR and RF codes and we’ll talk a lot about this in digital asset capture thing that we’re going to be doing next week. And then it’s about how that information is disseminated and how it’s collected. And there’s lots of different ways, you have the asset register, the enterprise programmes, GIS, going into maintenance managements softwares like Maximo, but most importantly into a document management system or Sharepoint. And then what we find is the 360 thing is a bit like my metaphor for it is you can have a beautiful point cloud or a beautiful model, it’s like an atlas on your coffee table, but without findability and the index at the back it’s pretty well useless. And that is the big problem that people find is this silo of BIM to FM to all of these things and how do you find information. 360 visual stuff gives us a quick way of doing it.
I just wanted to share one particular story and although this doesn’t look relevant what is really interesting is the maintenance and management programme are way ahead of BIM and compatibility in documentation because their life depends on an awful lot of things in their productivity. So, what we’re working with is one group of paper mills and they’ve got a number of paper mills, I think 15 around the world, and one of their problems is, and it’s a really simple problem by the face of it, they have in a typical paper mill 10,000 Greasing points which they have to locate. And they have to put 18 different greases into these at different intervals. Now, the problem for them is that if they get it wrong the cost in the last hour of production is £110,000 an hour. Now, that’s lost production of paper, that’s manpower, that’s in the warm up time, it’s logistics, the bottle necks in causes, it's huge.
And one of the terms I wanted to introduce into the conversation is one that I don’t hear the BIM community talking about very much and that’s what the condition monitoring industry use and that’s called the MTBF, Mean Time Between Failure.
Asset management is about predicting how long that lift, escalator, window, fire door, you’re going to manage it until such time as you’re going to replace it. So, in my field we’re using MTBF as one of the ROIs, it’s a critical feature, going back to previous presentations about how we monetise and how we look at the cost. MTBF is one of the critical things which can sum up an awful lot of things. And for the jobs I’ve been working in it comes back down to one thing, findability. If you can’t find that document, if you can’t find that model, if you can’t find all of your good work it’s just buried in a cabinet somewhere and no one can use it.
What we’ll be talking about in the digital capture workshop next week is how we can use 360 imagery very simply to shortcut. It’s not a silver bullet, there’s a whole bunch of collaborators and stakeholder that have to come together, but 360 imagery we find, and it’s been used in the oil and gas, nuclear field, maintenance, a lot of the learning that we’ve got there can be used to inform all sorts of things from housing associations to…I’ve got one example to finish off which I talked to George about and this idea that a housing association was mowing £1,000,000 a year more grass than it needed to because it didn’t know which bits of grass that it owned. Simple things, sometimes it’s a very simple solution which will get the energy and the buy in and the stories that are told about BIM and how we can make it that actually will motivate people and the asset owners to specify things that are going to help everybody down the line.
We’re going to be talking a lot in this workshop next week about some of the simple ways that you can use 360 for verification, documenting, monitoring change over time, commercialisation. You say here’s a repair, here is documented evidence that it was done etc. So, that’s briefly what I wanted to talk about, I know everybody is pressed for time, but that’s what I do and I’m happy to bring what I do into this community.
RICHARD FREER The meeting next week is on the 29th, but even if you can’t make that still put your name down for this workstream, put in the chat DAC. Has anybody got any points or questions on that?
SIDDARTH BHONSLE I have a question on asset management when it comes to classified information related to MoD. Is that something in the topic which we could discuss in the future?
BARRY BASSNETT Yeah, we can do, I’ve worked on a number of MoD contracts and there things that are changing and it’s largely been driven by procurement problems that the MoD have. So yeah, there are some interesting things that we can do about findability and about what you can do. There’s lots of things that cause problems like 360 imagery is really an issue because of security issues in the MoD, but there are ways of getting around that. But we’ll try and cover that if you want to and in fact if anybody wants to chase me up and ask me questions through my Linkedin stuff after the event, please feel free. But obviously we try and do it through this forum…
GEORGE STEVENSON Just on that point, if anybody is interested in joining the digital asset capture pilot that we’re running at the moment then please put DAC pilot in there as well into the chat, then we can include you in with the other housing associations, for example, who are learning along the way. Part of the exercise that we’re doing is providing some sort of support for them to do the first couple of buildings themselves because what we want to do is encourage people to engage with it and therefore be able to move forward.
DAVID CAREY Just in terms of protocol, I’m running a PhD survey at the moment and some of you as individuals I’ve reached out to already. It’s just something on a protocol I don’t want to launch it here, could you just pin me or stay on line after the meeting so I can just determine how the best way is to reach some of the present participants who may or may not which to take part in that survey. It’s focused on digitalisation and the digital divide between building and operations.
GORDON PRINGLE The digitised technology that’s coming from built asset foundation structures and building services is available now, we can look at it live, we can share some of the information that we have with some of this group that are actually buying into it at the moment that just delivers full asset appreciation in the setting to work of a system and then in the long term years after for maintenance, and alarming when things go out of sync and out of order. So, effectively that gives people transparency as to what the asset is actually going to achieve in the longer term.
GEORGE STEVENSON The golden thread workstream, this is what we’re trying to achieve in terms of context and the whole thing falling together. The key thing here is what we’re trying to do is protect against smoke egress, if a fire breaks out in a kitchen what do you need to do to make sure that that is limited? And compartmentation is one element, but then we’ve got things like smoke control detection, signage etc. So, those things all need to work together and in many cases, although they are required by law, as Howard said earlier they’re not being enforced, but that doesn’t mean that you’ve not got to have them in place. So, what we’re doing here is looking at how we can have this in a way that the local teams themselves can actually, the building safety managers themselves can go and check that information using digital asset capture, and this is part of the golden thread process.
So, it means that we’re therefore got more control over that, it means that the local teams can then pick up that information and then go and record it. And the 360 photos can be then held against each space and therefore we can make sure that that can then be updated on a progressive basis. So, here we’ve got the 360 photo which has been taken by a low cost camera and therefore what the specialist can then do is then go and tag those assets with the information that is needed. So, this is, as Charlotte was talking earlier about existing buildings, an example for existing buildings and also being able to then find something. So, as Barry was saying, you can go to a list, click on it and it takes you to the view in the 360 photo that the person was looking at when they did that. We think that’s a particularly useful thing to do.
Rattigans, at the last session, showed what they were doing as far as the golden thread is concerned. And part of the exercise is to glue together information that is already being collected, quite well in some cases, but make it so that it’s all joined up. So we’ve therefore got an integrated set of information where those are then coordinated. And that information may come from the BIM models, it may come from technical submittals, but it can also come from 360 photographs. So, we end up with something that is more complete that can then be checked and validated, as Paul Oakley was saying earlier, against COBie and also against 360. So, the principle here is having something that is progressively being validated during the design and construction process into handover. And in this case they would be using OpenSpace to do the 360 photos.
And this is a practical example of their implementation of the golden thread. They’ve got the model, they’ve got all of the asset data that’s connected back to the manufacturer’s product information. And also they can then locate where those detailed assets are actually in the building. This is the OpenSpace view, so you can see what’s above the ceilings which is integrated into the golden thread into the asset information model. And down on the right hand side there you’ve got it linked to all of the assets that are supposed to be in that room, but then that can be used to validate and test to see what has actually been installed in reality. And quite often we’ll find there’s some inconsistencies there. Then, this is showing how to find some safety critical assets like the fire dampers. In their case they’ve modelled the fire dampers which is great, but it’s not always easy to find them.
So here, we’ve got all of the different fire dampers connected back to the product information so that you can then look at the manufacturer’s information in the context of where that particular fire damper was installed. And then you can have a simple FM view of that, as well as the model, so you can see which spaces that particular fire damper is protecting and also it’s then tagged in the 360 photo. And those are then connected back to the product and also the documentation about the product.So, in this case the information that’s held in the O&M is actually recorded against the system and against the asset. And you can jump to a particular, in this case the FM has been through and they’ve identified which pages of a 72-page document are actually important.
So, what we’re really looking for with the golden thread group is to find similar examples of this where it’s not just a model, it’s not just an O&M set of information, but that’s been glued together and it’s actually being used by the operational team. Because what we’ve been discovering is there has been some great work done bey people that have produced great BIM models, but people aren’t using them. So, if they’re not using them going forward, that’s the bit that we need to tackle, to understand why they’re not and using 360 photography, for example, can bridge that gap.
RICHARD FREER So, your output, George, for your workstream is examples?
GEORGE STEVENSON Yes, very much so.
STEWART PARKER It was a great example where you used dampers in hospitals and to just demonstrate how bad it is I was just before Christmas at the brand new hospital The Countess of Cheshire. And it had got through all of the golden thread series of design and procurement etc and they had two floors of fusible link dampers that are totally not in any way useable because the HTMO stipulates that. And they had two floors of fusible dampers in corridors, wards and rooms. How do we get to that point in 2025 where it gets through the design, it gets through to the purchase these dampers and install these dampers? And the only reason, I’ve just found out last week I’ve checked that they’re going to change these dampers is because I did submit to them photographic evidence.
The photograph to hold, and the email, because you have that digital footprint, but where I’m going with this is there is no central point. I can go to the mandatory, I can go to the Building Safety Regulator, I’ve had it numerous times where it just falls on deaf ears. I’m not saying this because they can’t do it, I just think that the whole thing is blown up and they must have a huge backlog of problems.
RICHARD FREER George, is that the kind of example that you’re looking for?
GEORGE STEVENSON That’s exactly the sort of example.
RICHARD FREER So in that case, Stewart, can you put that in the chat and then we’ve got it written down and we can use that.
GEORGE STEVENSON If other people can do the same. What’s interesting, Stewart, is that the likelihood is if that’s been a BIM project it’s quite possible that the information has been required in the BIM execution plan and the asset information requirements, but it’s not been done. And it’s not been done in many cases because people haven’t considered that to be critical. And the challenge is that, in many cases, fire dampers because they’re part of let’s say a ventilation ductwork package, they sometimes aren’t considered to be assets which is incredible. But they’re required under Regulation 38…
STEWART PARKER That’s where I go with the Regulation 38. When I do my audits I work back and make sure everything from the wall packs, the damper installation, the type of damper for that wall, and more often than not that’s what identifies they’re putting dampers in the wrong walls or it’s just not suitable the way that they’ve installed it. And I often can go back to that part of dampers for that overall Regulation 38.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, and the fact is in many case the reason that things are modelled are for clash detection purposes.
DANIEL O’DOWD This question doesn’t need an answer, maybe it’s food for thought, but if I set up a company to construct let’s say several large blocks of houses. I set up that company and I ask that quote unquote BIM 19650 will be employed on that project, mainly for kind of coordination purposes to make sure that the project runs smoothly. What actual legal requirement is there for me to handover a proper set of information to the persons managing, running or even owning that building afterwards? Because without that what we’re facing is like the Grand Canyon where all of that information just drops off the edge of a cliff and the new person running the building has to create all of it from scratch. And it’s related to that question asked earlier, is it the case that a lot of the successful business models is where the person controlling the design phase is also going to be operating it?
So, there is a massive incentive for that information to come through, whereas if we know (and i’m speaking figuratively here) but if I know as a company I can just pass that on to my customer, where does the incentive come from for me to manage that really, really well?
GEORGE STEVENSON Daniel, the new legislation, particularly since you’ve made it about residential, there is a legal requirement now for the responsible person, both as the landlord and for the contractor, to sign a declaration that they’ve had all of the information that they need to keep that building safe. And therefore if they sign that and they haven’t then I guess they are committing a criminal act. So, I think that’s an opportunity.
DANIEL O’DOWD But in that case why aren’t we pushing for that BIM mandate to be across much more than centrally funded projects?
GEORGE STEVENSON I think you’re confusing how the information is being delivered rather than what information is being delivered. I am inclined to agree with you, Daniel, but it may not be the…
HOWARD HALL There’s a couple of things, unless BIM is specified in your contract, then BIM, or even digital isn’t specified in the Building Safety Act. It was in the consultation but it was removed on the basis it was suitable records. So, that’s half of the problem is that the requirement for BIM, unless it’s a government procurement because they’ve adopted BIM, isn’t necessarily an automatic requirement. The only caution I was going to offer is that if we’re going to offer examples I think we need to be careful to anonymise to sector. On the basis unless everyone can guarantee that they haven’t got NDAs or confidentiality in place, we’ve got to be careful that we don’t state references to specific projects where we may been further legal commitment to be able to publish that data. I think if we go by sector that will be really useful.
I’m involved in government sector, procurement and the delivery. A lot of what people are saying is what government are supposed to and have adopted on the basis that they are the vanguard of what should be done. There is feedback that the Building Safety Act, there is a certain frustration at the moment from those who initiated the legislation as to how it can be enforced and how it can be demonstrated. So, there is a real market need at the moment to be able to demonstrate building safety. What we need to do is make sure that it’s pragmatic.
The problem we have is that unless it’s written into the procurement, I’d like if we can to make sure that we’ve got an influence or a checklist for procurement because the procurement is often seen as either a cost or a limited objective aspect, rather than actually being what the requirement should be for longevity and operational requirements. So when we can collate this, if we can put it towards what’s a procurement checklist I think that would be the biggest impact going forward.
JIM WATTS I’m from Waites Construction and I come at this from a main contractor and a building perspective. To give yourself a little bit of comfort, i guess, there is a requirement under Gateway 3 that we get a signed letter from the principal accountable person that they’re received the information in a digital format that allows them to run the building safety and that he’s happy with it. Without that signed letter we can’t get a Gateway 3 through the process of the Regulator. So, at that stage we’re in for a hell of a bump fight? 1hr 11mins 28secs aren’t we?
JOHNNY FURLONG Just on a couple of points there about digital being removed from the legislation. In the secondary golden thread legislation HRBs still does best by digital, it just doesn’t get into what exactly that is. I think with all of this stuff, legislation is only going to make a difference if people get prosecuted, have eventually with it. I also think that companies are changing, people like Waites were talking there and the handover information is getting a huge amount better, particularly on the large and complicated projects and higher risk projects. But for us all, just keep pushing forward with it and help everybody along with it and move the industry forward. Because I honestly don’t ever seen anyone getting prosecuted for not handing over the information properly, that’s never going to happen, I don’t think.
GEORGE STEVENSON If there is an incident, then the lack of information that they should have done or that they’ve signed for, that’s going to be a big impact.
JOHNNY FURLONG Sure, it is and there is a risk there, but we’re talking about sanctions and stuff, look at Grenfell, how long did the architectural practice continue in existence after that. I’m not saying any of those people in that organisation were bad people. I think punishment will work a bit, but I think good practice which you’re trying to do here, is even more important.
GEORGE STEVENSON What Jim was just talking about there in getting through Gateway 3, if there is a delay or a stop notice in future they have to declare that on any future tender that they’re doing. That’s what i’ve been told. Is that not right?
JIM WATTS That would just be between us and our clients. If we fall foul of the Act and get a sanction against us that would affect us because any client employing a principal contractor under the Act needs to consider sanctions.
EDWARD COSTER It’s really just jumping back to the points Jim and Howard made and continuing on from those. I work in the operational side and it’s probably no great surprise sometimes we don’t agree on what information is vital. And a lot of that is because we haven’t had a good level of communication. So, the teams in our housing associations that deliver buildings aren’t the operational teams and we haven’t always communicated as well as we could. And really we do need to be involved at procurement stage…so there’s that understanding of what our information requirements are from the get go, so that’s built into the procurement processes.
Which I know is no great surprise, but it still needs to happen and I’d be welcoming some more dialogue in that sense and talking to the likes of Jim about what we expect from an operational point of view, so you would better understand what our requirements are.
GEORGE STEVENSON I think that’s what Paul Oakley was saying, that we’re trying to do the digital handover group. i know that John Morrow is involved in that, but Pencho and your input to that would be invaluable.
RICHARD FREER I’ll just run through those again. If you’re interested in the impact of assets not working and want to get involved in that workstream write impact in the chat. If you’re interested in PFI put PFI in the chat. If you’re interested in digital handover and technical submissions, put OM in the chat.
PHIL THOMPSON Can we not do a poll? We’re on a digital platform here and we’re just pinging stuff into messages like it’s 1980.
GEORGE STEVENSON Phil, we’ve been doing this for a while and what we find is that this works, whereas asking people to respond to a poll, we found it doesn’t work. I agree with you, but that’s the reality.
RICHARD FREER The digital asset capture workstream, put 360 DAC in the chat. For golden thread put golden in the chat.
GEORGE STEVENSON If you know other people who are also similarly motivated to you, please ask them to engage with us. They can obviously look at the video, but whether people actually will do that, people have got other things to do. But I think you would agree that by coming along to these meetings and particularly the workstream meetings you’ll get quite a a lot out of it.
RICHARD FREER As you said earlier on, it’s not just the meetings, it’s if you’ve got an issue or you’ve got a problem, you can ask at this meeting what do I do about this. And they’ll be five people in that meeting that will know exactly what you should do and they’ll tell you. And if they don’t they’ll tell you where to find out.
CHAT
Piotr Bytnar (External) 11:06 am
Hi all! Could you provide links for the registration, please?
Diarmuid Murphy (External) 11:07 am
Hi, I'm from Murphy Geospatial. I would be interested to join and give our experience of digital asset capture using 3D laser scanning, photography etc. Please include me for the working group
matt wilkie (External) 11:11 am
Experienced the same with fire watch issues relating to inherited emergency light batteries ( noted as condition B but nearly 20 years old!).
Chis Milling (Unverified) 11:14 am
Would it be usual that there may be a need of a Waking Watch in place when new builds are handed over. Or does this happen for older stock?
Pierre Venter (External) 11:15 am
The Business Case is what all of the Design and Engineering practice must make. The Cost of collection is a real requirement measured against the cost in future, risk etc
David J. Hills (External) 11:16 am
"waking watch" can be applied in any building BUT should be only introduced as a last resort and in line with the NFCC guidance and is generally introduced for failings in cladding, compartmentation etc as well as failings in other essential equipment/measures
Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) 11:18 am
Hi - this is my first meeting so thank you for the invite. I am the Head of Digital Estates at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. We are working on the golden thread and are quite close to having a reasonably live (overnight) link of our CAFM data (incl projects, reactive, PPM etc) to feed into our digital twins (ArcGIS Indoor Modelling). Very early days of developing tools to utilise this but this is the main thrust of our current work.
Chis Milling (Unverified) 11:19 am
I believe that good and curated data should be used. There are lots of standards out there, all clearly defined. Databases can often be inflexible in the data they can accept - so transfer of data between partners is not always straight forward.
Gordon Pringle (External) 11:25 am
Happy to be contacted regards Building Services IMPACT
Chris Jeffers (External) 11:26 am
All agreed, and in addition we need to focus on asset resilience at design stage, and make sure this is considered. The more resilient an asset is, the lower the risk of failure and ultimately the less will be spent over time on maintaining, as well as the impact costs of failure to the business. Clearly a "cost/benefit" analysis needed here, but this should be a "standard" approach in the design phase for assets that if they underperform or fail, could impact the business
Karen Ostler (External) 11:30 am
I have to leave now as I have a Client meeting starting. I'll try jump in as soon as that is over. Thank you.
matt wilkie (External) 11:30 am
I find that as a constant issue as even introducing Risk Registers to monitor problems within a site. You may find multiple parties including the client not wanting it due to "ownership". Once on it and dated it is recognised.
Chis Milling (Unverified) 11:31 am
I think a Nuclear facility will hold facility data. If they go wrong it is a big problem. Issues in housing will be limited to the residents, so managing data is likely less robust
Andrew Perry (External) 11:34 am
The BSRIA Asset Failure Risk Methodology is a good place to start as it drives all stakeholders to consider: what are the critical activities- what assets / systems enable these activities- what is the condition of the assets _ failure risk rating - what is the impact of this failure. Compliance should be considered as a core critical requirement as it impacts on the overall "availability of the facility" for the core business
Charlotte Brogan (External) 11:34 am
Terence Horsman, please note that I personally think that discussions and any outputs should be split into two different areas, existing buildings and new buildings. The process for these two types of buildings is very different.
David J. Hills (External) 11:35 am
Dame Judith in her lecture has highlighted a number of companies / organisations who she applauded including Clarion Housing, Persimmon Homes
Terence Horsman (External) 11:35 am
Very valid point! Thanks all for the comments and for the opportunity to present today. Looking forward to the follow up call.
Richard Whittaker (External) 11:37 am
A Judgement in favour of the claimant for £14,539,243.45, together with interest and costs - eye watering !!. Its a long read ! 48 pages of it. This relates to the BSA stick approach
Chris Craggs (External) 11:40 am
why would it be different - £1M/mth is the same whether new or existing? This group is working towards the taxonomy and then a quantification of impacts - with a view to highlighting and motivating corrective action (might be reactive but also preventative and redundancy). Why would new and old be different?
Chris Bicknell (External) 11:40 am
PFI Lifecycle - initially as BCIS but should be developed in operation to become full asset component based. - aligned to the CAFM regime. It’s the process not being understood and developed once bid is won that leaves hopes.
Investment in detail asset level lifecycle modelling is absolutely key - and a golden income stream for asset survey teams. Needs a better way to capture in life - George as previous webinars you have presented.
Andrew Perry (External) 11:41 am
How many PFI projects have roof mounted assets - AHU / Chiller etc but fail to provide a proprietary walkway system compatible with the roofing system to protect the roof / warranty ?
Soheila X Moradi (VIDA) (External) 11:42 am
Can you please circulate these presentations afterward?
Chris Jeffers (External) 11:43 am
Great overview Matt, all agreed.
Andrew Perry (External) 11:44 am
Approx 400 PFI projects due for handback in next 5-7 yrs
Charlotte Brogan (External) 11:45 am
matt wilkie, sometimes the suitability of the product in the first instance is not correct and this has been changed due to CAPEX being too high a not fully understanding the effect of OPEX. The example I would use is the not suitable roofing materials for the specific building e.g. a high trafficked roof will need a roofing material with a high compressive strength (150kPA) which is only FOAMGLAS currently on the market (from my understanding) not a standard roof material with a 60kPA compressive strength.
Andrew Perry (External) 11:46 am
Asset owners - real estate etc and Public Sector are becoming more aware of the value of asset data and the need to have access / retain a full copy of the FM Service data to enable "deep insight" that informas on long term strategy. The gaps are "quite considerable" and generally only crystallise on tendering contracts
Assumpta Bekeny (External) 11:48 am
Are we going to get the slides please.
matt wilkie (External) 11:48 am
Agree, as I find ventilation often suffers with financial engineering to reduce costs. For example the building was designed with fixed windows. But due to budget changes they remove ventilation and the building then suffers with poor air changes, areas being hot etc. as the windows should have been altered and assessed to opening.
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 11:50 am
Client Support - Please can you discuss how we support Clients to develop a consistent scope of work? If we don't then the residual aspect we have is that designs and O&M do not meet their expectations. Can we create a guide including the implications of not adding certain items within the scope?
matt wilkie (External) 11:50 am
Seen contracts state "digital format" for drawings and commercially led decisions pushing that a blurred PDF is a digital format. Painful when trying to use them.
Charlotte Brogan (External) 11:53 am
BIM4Housing, My personal view around everything we have discussed today is at the outset of a project having a project specific communication strategy with clear definitions, responsibilities and information requirements. Every project should start with the end in mind and cover all of the items that we are discussing today and more, this will ensure that all data can be captured and transferred between parties. This is not just the EIR (from BIM) this goes further than this basic document that the CIC created to assist with the BIM compliance. This strategy will also confirm what will happen in the event that person who is named as a responsible party leaves the project/business or is off sick etc.
Najib (Unverified) 11:54 am
following the ISO19650 is the solution to require the right level of information with a clear responsibility matrix for each of the project stakeholders. the challenge is to assess the information needed in the early stages before sending tenders, and this is where we are usually not involving the operations SMEs...
Chris Bicknell (External) 11:56 am
And just to note we are currently updating the BS 8544 Lifecycle cost in use standard. - Happy to take views on current version and lessons learned in using lifecycle as a design / operational driver.
Chis Milling (Unverified) 11:56 am
You need the system, its components, required data - processes that can amend the data
Charlotte Brogan (External) 11:56 am
Paul Oakley, I believe that your discussion needs to either highlight the differences or split into two different categories, Existing Buildings and New Buildings as the process for each of these could be very different (whereas some items can be standardised.
Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) 11:57 am
Clients have to be better at setting out their requirements and following through on them! I don't think there is enough knowledge in client organisations to achieve this. Yet.
matt wilkie (External) 11:59 am
Often resistance to change aswell, which doesn't help.
Chis Milling (Unverified) 11:59 am
Sharepoint – Arh
William Borthen (External) 11:59 am
I think the condition grading in 8544 needs a review. I believe it includes grades that should be separate attributes.
Chris Jeffers (External) 11:59 am
Put simply - what are the barriers to standardisation of data (in this context) and how can we overcome them..? I know that is a huge area of discussion(!), but who is leading on this, if anyone... appreciate we cannot dig into this today, but it keeps rattling around in my head (!) I understand the history, "how we have got here", commercial interests, specific sector use cases etc... but moving forward, surely we all agree we need to move towards standardisation, at least at a high level...?
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 12:00 pm
Working Groups schedule and scope request - Please could you share a list of working groups and their scope so we can share this with our root organisations. Will the information developed in the working groups be accessible within the website?
Charlotte Brogan (External) 12:00 pm
Yes but the qualified persons within the industry should be driving this at the outset of the project and asking the relevant questions of the clients to better get to know them and their requirements along with starting with the end in mind. If the client doesn't have the knowledge the industry should be holding their hand and bringing them along, whilst informing them of their responsibilities and the overall all project communication strategy should outline all of this.
BOWES, Andrew (Unverified) 12:00 pm
Providers such as Multivista are using AI technology to interrogate 360 camera imagery to identify maintenance needs/defects (specifically passive firestopping in their case) - are there other AI based tools that can interrogate the imagery for wider maintenance/defect identification?
matt wilkie (External) 12:00 pm
Should, but I am finding more and more people are "not" qualified or trained in the relevant roles.
Philip Hannabuss (External) 12:01 pm
So many systems claim to be a CDE when they are not, The term is now being diluted and this causes lots of confusion
Terence Horsman (External) 12:02 pm
Barry (Unverified) Great idea to bring MTBF into the evaluation as well
Chis Milling (Unverified) 12:02 pm
Grass Zones
Mark Austin (External) 12:02 pm
Agree with findability on all which is why we focus on with words in a number and data driven world. Images great
Benedicta Anetekhai (External) 12:03 pm
Even SharePoint is considered a CDE these days
Daniel O'Dowd (Unverified) 12:03 pm
Perhaps one of the questions that we need to be asking is 'who is final bearer of the cost'? Am I right in my perception that a lot of the success stories are where the building/business owner bears cost we end up with lots of solutions to save/use good IM practices but where that isnt the case, one can just pass the cost on to the customer and move on?
Philip Hannabuss (External) 12:04 pm
As a industry we need to be in a position to clarify the terminology and the essential criteria of what can be clarified as a CDE !!
Joe Stott (External) 12:04 pm
great question - same for MoJ work obviously
Nicholas Nisbet (External) 12:05 pm
ISO19650 part 1 is being revised to include a strong definition.
Pierre Venter (External) 12:05 pm
George. Please use a Poll and/Survey form. It’s a Data list when completed and can be linked to the contact list for mailing
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 12:06 pm
Artificial Intelligence - Data and information consistency and use of AI to support the BIM in Asset management. Please can we have a view from the working group in the future in terms to trust and use of AI? (please also contact Nick Nisbit)
Chris Bicknell (External) 12:07 pm
David Carey - digital divide - happy to discuss from 15 years of AECOM experience.
Thompson, Nicholas (External) 12:09 pm
A critical aspect that is often overlooked is correctly setting up a BIM environment to match your operational Asset Hierarchy. Ensuring a function driven asset hierarchy prior to construction/production is paramount to ensuring that you get the most from the collected data. It also allows the use of Object Type Libraries to aid in the standardisation of design and asset strategy, and drive sharing knowledge across building, water and mobility industries.
Daniel O'Dowd (Unverified) 12:09 pm
Do we ever check whether or not we have the financial resources centrally to enforce a lot of this before putting them in place?
Paul Sheedy (External) 12:10 pm
photoluminescent fire exits no longer work when fluorescents are replaced with LED, important fact.
Najib (Unverified) 12:12 pm
Computer vision can be used to track events and to give real-time insights through imagery analysis and predict some potential issues.
Charlotte Brogan (External) 12:12 pm
George Stevenson, would this require client teams having direct licences for these software or is this licence expected to be held by the Principal Contractors / Principal Designers?
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 12:13 pm
Golden Thread - We need the principles of the Golden Thread for application to non-high-rise buildings. Demonstrating to clients that this best practice will save money and improve safety is important. I do not believe the CDM2015 H&S file has a progressive update and results in poor Preconstruction information.
Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) 12:13 pm
You'd hope so but I've seen plenty of examples where it isn't checked. Implementing a solution without the resource to check what the solution is telling you. There shouldn't be an implementation of a technology without consideration of how it will operate and what information it will provide.
Piotr Bytnar (External) 12:13 pm
problem is everyone plays for themselves but talks about communication and collaboration - the standards of actual documentation actually vary greatly and people working on buildings do too (as you can see here). In my perspective, the provision of information needs to be forced by technology that will give anyone a hard stop if the appropriate data is not provided Stage 0 - to AM and Decommission. Level up by a forced stop and assigned responsibility in one data environment. Trouble is, this requires consensus and money to develop a digital platform. If there are organisations who would like to gather resources to move such a solution forward I would love to meet you. Reach out through here https://www.linkedin.com/in/piotr-bytnar/
Phull, Pav Singh (External) 12:15 pm
Golden Thread - we need to understand the cost of keeping the information up to date. This should include accessibility to the information by supply chains.
Charlotte Brogan (External) 12:15 pm
George Stevenson, will this software check to see if items that are touching each other are compliant as a system? E.g. Fire Stopping is tested in the wall type that this is contained within or highlight that this hasn't been validated by someone, Personally I believe that the data is only as good as the person entering the data, there needs to be another layer added to the data capture which confirmed the responsible party who has checked that the data that has been captured has been validated.
Mark Austin (External) 12:16 pm
Use the words to detect for these issues
Andrew Perry (External) 12:17 pm
Typical for FD is the "As Installed" Dwgs ( where available) do not mirror the system "as installed"
Mark Austin (External) 12:17 pm
I have an example of where we look for the word Knives all the time in documentation as they are banned on sites on safety grounds. Its the same process
STEWART ( PARKER NVQ ) (Unverified) 12:18 pm
i will follow the comment up about the hospital project up with an email George
Pierre Venter (External) 12:19 pm
@Mark. The process must enable the search across all fields and bespoke to get data on hand.
Chis Milling (Unverified) 12:19 pm
effective Data Collection from the Client. They need a system.
Charlotte Brogan (External) 12:19 pm
Daniel O'Dowd (Unverified), This is a mandatory compliance under CDM 2015 for all health and safety items
Mark Austin (External) 12:19 pm
This is possible
Chis Milling (Unverified) 12:19 pm
Need to move away talking about Information. It is often a snapshot.
Cliff Kneale (External) 12:20 pm
here is a bim protol that can be appended to the contract. https://ukbimframework.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Information-Protocol-to-support-BS-EN-ISO19650-2.pdf
Daniel O'Dowd (Unverified) 12:21 pm
can
in a useable and easily retrievable format?
David J. Hills (External) 12:22 pm
Under the BSA, often, Accountable Persons are often layman and others who dont know what information they need, are required to hold.
Charlotte Brogan (External) 12:22 pm
Hall, Howard, The Golden Thread Process states that the data MUST be digital.
Nicholas Nisbet (External) 12:23 pm
Pragmatism = yet more pdfs.
David J. Hills (External) 12:23 pm
Yes but the PAP again often knows what information they need. sorry doesnt know what information they need
Daniel O'Dowd (Unverified) 12:24 pm
a digital photograph of a report that I've written by hand is still technically digital - is there specification on to what extent the information must be digitised? as I've read there seems to be a lot of confusion around the term structured data.
Daniel O'Dowd (Unverified) 12:26 pm
i think that until its in a format where it can be automatically validated by an external party, there wont be the funds available to check and/or prosecute failures to comply.
Chris Jeffers (External) 12:28 pm
End user requirements in data standards are essential for positive progress in this space
Chis Milling (Unverified) 12:30 pm
Need to stop talking about pesky 'Information' - it is a snapshot..... we store lots of snapshots and can't find anything. We need to extract the data and capture when it gets changed. Systems, processes using the data
Philip Hannabuss (External) 12:30 pm
George Stevenson BIM4Housing could we do a focus dicussion on data platforms?
Chis Milling (Unverified) 12:30 pm
I would rather that than talking about document management systems
Philip Hannabuss (External) 12:30 pm
This is my point the terminology has been so diluted...