BIM in Asset Management Monthly Forum 22-10-2025

BIM IN ASSET MANAGEMENT MONTHLY FORUM 22-10-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON (shares screen). We’ve got BIM4Housing which is quite a big community that we took over about 5 years ago. And last year we decided to extend beyond housing because a lot of what we were doing was very relevant to all types of buildings, but we decided to do a focused session on asset management. And as part of that process we were trying to make sure that we were finding what information was going to be useful for different parts of the process. This is what’s become known as the Golden Thread.

We’ve got information that is perhaps generated by the development team, by designers constructors, manufacturers, advisory people, project managers, cost managers etc and operations. And what we did, we spoke to each of them and identified what information would it help if they had that would make their job easier. So earlier on in the process where how could the constructions job be more productive and effective if the development team gave them better information. And similarly with operations teams, what do they need from the team? And we built a big community of about 2,000 where we are capturing information that is common to these processes.

For example, we looked at data and we came up with standardised solutions and data templates for that. We also did a lot of work around classification and reusable data libraries. We’ve done a huge amount of work on fire safety in general and also safety critical assets. And sustainability, we helped establish Zero, and also digital records. And we were asked by the government to work with L&Q about 4 or 5 years ago to actually identify what information was needed to create the Golden Thread, because nobody really understood what the Golden Thread was. So we went and used our communities to actually identify that. And we are responsible for asset and survey information.

And the challenge is whenever you ask anybody who is a specialist in a certain area what information do you need? The answer will typically be it depends. So, what we decided to do was bring them together and run some scenarios that said these are the circumstances, what information do we need to know about a fire door or a damper or a sprinkler system….

ALEX OLDMAN I notice that Phil has asked a question about the AI notetakers. Just to respond to that, in the background the team who are running this who are all volunteers, please bear in mind, are using the AI notetakers to provide summaries to the meetings. These meetings are also recorded and published on Youtube. I’m not aware that we have any specific policy against AI notetakers and obviously there are people that might require them for accessibility reasons as well. So, I don’t have a particular objection to AI notetakers on the call, but obviously it’s helpful if real people in actual real life are here to input to the discussions as well. That’s my personal response, not an official one.

RICHARD FREER Thank you, I think that covers it. I find it good that people who aren’t able to attend are keen enough to actually get involved.

LARRY NICOL If you’re not careful, with notetakers you just end up with lots of consumers who just want to take and not to contribute.

RICHARD FREER Yeah, absolutely and we have experimented with not doing them. But we have a lot of people who are regulars who are kind of not very happy that just because they missed a meeting they couldn’t get the information. So we took it under advisement and included them. Last month we got about 200 people and we’ll probably get the same this month so we are certainly getting plenty of live attendance. And it’s been going up consistently for the last 6 months so I guess something is going right.

GORDON PRINGLE Be wary of the notetakers though. I was at a BESA conference on Thursday and a legal representative from one of the larger international consultancies was suggesting that the old term Chatham House rules when you’re disclosing that an AI is in the background, if you’ve said it you are culpable for it.

RICHARD FREER We say at the beginning that we record this meeting.

GORDON PRINGLE Yes, I’m just saying if you’re talking about something contentious which at the end of the day we’re all here for a purpose, to improve the industry. And unfortunately some of the things that perhaps we have seen are not of best practice.

RICHARD FREER I appreciate that, we do have to be careful. But we also have to be aware of the fact that we’re trying to get out there, not stay in here. And the best way of doing that is showing people what we’re doing. And the only way we can do that is actually showing people live meetings, that’s what we found from experience. We put the links to the meetings on LinkedIn, they’re emailed out to people who are interested and on balance. We did really think about it.

GORDON PRINGLE It wasn’t a criticism Richard, by any stretch of the imagination, it was just an observation. Everybody in the room at the conference was somewhat surprised by the legal complexity, by the process. And apparently one of the largest international management consultancies has had a court case from an AI generated report that they charged for. And they’ve basically had to return all of the charge for the management submission of the report because it had been collated by AI. And they were denying that it was theirs, although it had their…it was kind of crazy in the sense that they hadn’t thought it through, but they were an international recognised consultancy. So, it is a strange situation at the moment.

RICHARD FREER Yeah, it’s a weird one, I think there are a lot of things like that. I’m a bit of an expert on the regulations about personal data, GDPR.

JUSTIN GILLARD Just as an anecdote, I was in a meeting recently and someone left their microphone on in a meeting room. They didn’t realise that it was on and they said something about another subcontractor that they didn’t realise was being heard. So obviously be aware if your microphone is on and you don’t realise it’s on. Because AI notetakers sometimes work on the other side so it can come out in the meeting minutes what was said.

RICHARD FREER George is having problems at the hot desk, so we’re going to move on with the agenda. About 4 years ago we held god knows how many roundtable events around the 12 fire critical assets. Looking at what were the risks and how to mitigate the risks of them not functioning properly. They are all published on the website. They were reissued 2 years ago and then last month and earlier this month we held another series of roundtables to get issue 3 done and they’ve now been updated. So if anyone wants to look at those 12 fire critical assets go onto the website and you can see what we’ve achieved up until now.

We hold sporadically a poll which we’re going to move straight into now. Click on the link to the poll in the chat, there are 8 short questions. Some of the questions are reused because our data analysts like to look at trends. First question, how well does your CEO/FO understand their duties under the Building Safety Act? Question 2, do you need to inform the Regulator when a fire door is replaced?

FRAZER ARGYROS-FARRELL On question 2, that’s slightly ambiguous because just like for like replacement of the leaf, you don’t have to notify the BSR, but if you’re replacing the whole door set then you do. So like for like replacement not an issue, but if you’re replacing the entire door set frame architecture you’ve got to notify. And also if it’s an HRB or not.

RICHARD FREER OK, we’ll leave that one and move to question 3. Do you believe that an independent third-party should check that adequate safety critical information is provided and is being maintained?

FRAZER ARGYROS-FARRELL I guess the question is here is what you're trying to achieve with that, Because if you're talking Golden Thread, then theoretically most of it's done by third parties anyway, because they don't tend to have the in house expertise.

RICHRD FREER Number 4, are you asked to report on embodied carbon? Number 5, on your most recent project did you receive a BIM model that reflects the detail of what was actually built, yes or no? Number 6, should the fire & emergency information include a floor plan with the locations of all the safety critical assets? Number 7, how frequently is that information provided in a form that you are able to validate?

PAUL WOMACK Should that read years, half year, 9 months, 3 months?

RICHARD FREER No, that is how frequently is it provided, how often do you get it, 100% of the time, 75% of the time, zero. Number 8, do all of the buildings in your portfolio have a current and up-to-date fire strategy? Alex is now going to enlighten us on Awaab’s Law.

ALEX OLDMAN I’ve been involved in BIM4Housing and BIM In Asset Management for many years. I’m a specialist in asset management, we’re a software provider. And I’ve been in discussions in the last few weeks regarding some activities in the Golden Thread Taskforce. There’s a group of us who are starting to work together more closely, trying to provide end to end solutions and actually demonstrate how we can connect capabilities together to deliver. This is going to be a general introduction to Awaab’s Law which is a statute that’s coming into effect on Monday 27th of October.

And that’s in order to target risks that have been arising from a case that happened in Rotherham following the death of a child in a house that had been exposed to serious damp and mould. And in that particular case it was social housing and the landlord had not take appropriate action to protect the child who was at risk. So, I’m sharing some open resources. This is a process which has been published just a few months ago by the MHCLG (Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government) and you can see the link at the bottom of the page.

This basically outlines a suggested approach for what the process is going to be in terms of handling damp complaints. So the issue around damp management is that often people know that their properties are suffering damp and mould. they report them to the landlord but the landlord doesn’t take action, doesn’t take the complaint seriously enough and that needs to be addressed and that’s exactly what this new regulation and law is all about. Just quickly stepping through the process here and throwing out some ideas in terms of practical applications, that’s the objective of the next 5 minutes discussion. The tenant is going to be the person who initially reports the damp and mould, I’ll come back and challenge that in a little bit, but we might imagine that’s the point at which a member of the household or an interested stakeholder reports the damp and mould to the landlord.

So if you’re providing services for residents then you’ve got to think about making sure that you’re capturing that inbound report process. And because of the consequences of the law and the strict service levels that are associated with this you need to be able to particularly flag a damp and mould case extremely quickly. Part of the tenant report may include a photograph and that might be very desirable. So you’ve got to capture that photograph and then that kicks off an investigation process. So, the members of staff have got to capture the hazard in the background, make sure that that’s investigated appropriately, so we understand what the level of risk is.

There’s a government proscribed standard for understanding levels of risks in housing called the Housing Health & Safety Rating System (HHSRS) and it’s recommended that that is used to assess the level of severity associated with that particular case that’s been resolved. But that can be assessed in a number of different ways, as long as you’re able to demonstrate a process for determining the severity then that’s appropriate. And depending on the level of risk that’s been determined there’s appropriate responses. So, they might be emergency responses that are required if it’s a very serious level of damp that’s been found and the household is very much at risk.

And then we’re going to be able to decamp the resident from their home and offer them alternative emergency accommodation. And certainly we need to get fixes in place and underway. And then as part of this process the tenant is also provided with a written summary of the investigations, the findings and the fixes that are being returned as well, so there is a response process to this as well, If the tenant doesn’t feel that the response has been appropriate, if the risk hasn’t been taken seriously enough, if the response hasn’t been adequate enough then there is also scope to handle a complaints process which will provide escalation through all of this as well.

So thinking very seriously about the data that’s going to be captured throughout this process because for us BIM means better information management. So what we need to make sure is that we’re capturing information at the source and making sure that we’re capturing all of the most appropriate information and relevant information about the building. The instant where the damp is physically in the building, so spatial information becomes very important to us. And we need to understand any other measures that we know about that building. For example, have you deployed humidity and temperature sensors into the property and we’ll talk about the role of IoT in all of this.

It’s also important to have all of the latest tenant’s contact information because we’ve got to acknowledge and link the resident who is reporting the problem to the property that they’re actually reporting the problem with. And then also we need to be able to get that written report back to them as well, which might be something that we deliver electronically via email or in fact through a postal process as well. We’ve got to make sure that we’re looking through the investigation properly, that we’re recording all of the investigation steps that have taken place. Be mindful of the fact that this potentially might end up in a legal situation so you need to be very careful and accurate with the capture of data and the way that information is being recorded in the system, AI notetakers aside.

And then obviously the appropriate remediation, so making sure that you’ve got work orders that have been raised to appropriate contractors, and there’s a whole load of considerations behind that as well. Are the contractors accredited? Do they understand the problem that they’re dealing with? Can they demonstrate that they are completing work to the required standard? that might require before and after photographs, before and after certificates, installation certificates for remediation, whatever that might take as well.

So this is the government outline process, but as you can understand perhaps from the way that I’m talking about this there’s a number of different ways that this can be implemented within different organisations. Interestingly, that guidance link at the bottom of the page from and information data perspective, if you’re more from my angle on the database technology side of things there’s also the recommended data model that sits behind that for the sort of information that’s to be held as well. So that’s worth investigating that link. I’ve used this slide to summarise the service levels that are associated with this.

The initial determination will potentially be something that happens as a desktop exercise, but more often than not will actually involve an assessor visiting the building immediately. And that determination needs to happen very promptly in order to ensure that if we determine there is an emergency level of risk involved then we can act within 24 hours. If we feel that there is a significant hazard being presented then we have 10 days to investigate and act. So we’ve got to make that determination very quickly about the level of hazard that’s involved. And I’m not a qualified housing health & safety risk assessor, but what I’ll say is that there’s elements of understanding the building and the condition that the building is in, as well as the household that’s in the building.

So, for example, people with respiratory disorders on medication of various sorts, young people and old people in particular are going to be at an increased level of risk from harm from damp and mould. So, it’s very much about the resident who’s in the building as much as it is about the level of risk that’s physically present in the building itself. So, if you’re not able to respond within 24 hours to act on an emergency then you need to provide alternative accommodation. And this is all, by the way, running 24/7, this isn’t a 9 to 5 service that we’re talking about here.

So if somebody makes a report on a Saturday morning then potentially you need to get them into emergency accommodation on the Sunday. So social landlords at this point need to be very much geared to providing emergency accommodation even over a weekend, which has additional levels of complexities. And there’s this requirement to provide the report within 3 working days of conclusion of the investigations. You can see if we go down a significant hazard route then we’ve got slightly longer, but we’ve got to start work within 5 days. And if there is what they describe as further work then that needs to be completed within a 12 week period.

Hopefully at the end of this process then the risk that’s present in the dwelling property has been mitigated appropriately and then the resident is able to return to their accommodation if they’ve been decanted to an alternative accommodation, or fi the works have been happening whilst they’ve been in situ then that’s been completed to their satisfaction. What I’d suggest or recommend is that there’s a final risk assessment in the entire process so that you can determine officially that the risks have been demonstrated to have been properly closed off.

RICHARD FREER Alex, you said about legal ramifications, what are the legal ramifications? Is it as onerous as fire?

ALEX OLDMAN Well yes, it’s under health & safety law. The law hasn’t actually kicked in yet, it sounds like there are some lawyers on the call so they may be able to offer an alternative approach on that. But potentially there’s going to be fines and corporate action against organisations who are failing to take this. If you’re a social landlord then the Regulator for social housing will be coming down very hard on you at this point. So, this is a very serious piece of legislation and interestingly it’s being expanded out. So Awaab’s Law, this process that we’re looking at here is being expanded out to matters relating to building safety and fire safety in 2026.

it’s also going to look at matters about, for example, other hazards that happen in homes. People falling over because of, for example, slipping over in the bath is a remarkably common injury in the household. So slips and falls, slips on the level, you might have buildings where there is an uneven floor surface. Older buildings, for example, or that there’s changes in level throughout the building, that can start to cause hazards for the elderly and the particularly young as well. And obviously matters around fire safety and building safety are already covered as well. But that’s expanding out. It's October 2025 when the focus is on damp and mould. The government have a stated objective to expand that out in 2026. Are there any lawyers who want to provide a viewpoint on this?

RICHARD FREER Has anybody got any queries? Are you all geared up for this?

JOSEPH KOZELKA I’m working for Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing, just started as a BIM manager a couple of weeks ago. Does this apply to all landlords or just housing associations? And is there an accreditation scheme already for contractors to be able to repair these damp and mould conditions? Or is that something that’s been talked about at this moment in time?

GEORGE STEVENSON (rejoining the meeting having been disconnected earlier). I am in what’s considered to be the smartest building in London, 22 Bishopsgate. so when I got the opportunity to actually do this from here I was really looking forward to it and it’s been a disaster.

PAUL SHEEDY I can tell you for a fact that 22 Bishopsgate is not the smartest building in London.

GEORGE STEVENSON (shares screen). For the people that haven’t been involved in what we’re doing this is the Golden Thread Taskforce. And I’m going to be incorporating some new things in here as well. The point about the Golden Thread, right from the start that we’ve been working on is the Golden Thread should be digital. And we always meant that as machine-readable because we didn’t anticipate ChatGPT five years ago, but we certainly anticipated that we’d need everything to be connectable from a machine-readable perspective. And now it’s even more important.

I was talking to Adie earlier and he’s got a project where they actually just try to do everything in the old fashioned way using documents, using a traditional common data environment. Adie, could you explain what happened from your perspective?

A BADMOS What happened at that time was the assumption that the contractor knows what he’s doing and that we specified to him that we would we like everything to be captured electronically. The promise was there and we gave the specifications, we went away and the project proceeded. But what we found out was as the project was going ahead and things were moving on that wasn’t being achieved. So when we now completed he projects it just went back to the old ways, everything is in document, PDF and all that. So that really didn’t work. So we had to learn to change things and to make it clear, right from the start you want data capturing.

GEORGE STEVENSON Adie, what was the impact of that though?

A BADMOS The impact of that was we had about 6 or 7 months before we could get the sign offs, Building Control as well as the Gateway 2. So obviously everything was delayed, just because of that. So it is important that we build it into the project from the beginning and that is what we then tried to do on new projects.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think that provides some context and also the fact that these buildings obviously as people on this call will know much better than me, they are very complex. but in other words the building under the Golden Thread standards or explanations is it needs to be considered as a single system where lots of different components need to work together, and that’s complicated. And what we therefore need to do deal with the fact that information is typically provided in work packages that if you’re just using traditional technology, just using documents, it’s going to be very difficult to actually interpret things.

So what we’ve got here is, for example, if a fire breaks out in a kitchen and it’s generating smoke we need to stop it from getting into that stairwell. And the ways in which of doing that are good compartmentation. But even if the Golden Thread for fire doors is perfect, unless the wall, cavity barriers, the penetration seals, the dampers etc are all functioning properly then we’re going to be reliant on the smoke control system. And the smoke control system needs an effective protection system and we need signage as well. So the point is that all of those things need to be able to work together and that’s a complex thing for anybody to work out.

And therefore if we can get it in a digital format where all of the golden threads are federated and they can talk to each other we stand a chance. So in this particular case we’ve got a BIM model, we’ve got product information from the manufacturers. But this is the most important thing, what we’ve got here is a spatial model where we’ve got that stairwell there is a clear function. And the functional use of the other spaces is critical to what that door is actually doing. So what we’re doing here is ? 39 mins 17 secs in terms of its function.

And therefore when somebody comes along and uses one of the great applications like Plan radar or Riskbase to do inspections, they need to be referencing it back to that same unique asset. And therefore just having a PDF document isn’t going to do the job. So what we’re looking to do with the Golden Thread Taskforce is to make it so that we can then transform record information from dumb to smart, from passive to active and from human-actionable to machine-actionable. And by doing that it means that we can start to apply some modern technology to things to find out whether we’ve got better productivity and accuracy.

And the principle that we’re working to is that we may have some great information, CAD data, COBie data, O&MS, but unless they’re referenced to each other properly then it’s a nightmare. Manual checking, and to some extent what Adie was saying there. So we need to be able to draw these things together into a standardised format where we can integrate and make things federated. My view is that unless you can run some AI against a dataset of handover information then it’s not really adequate in today’s world. It's relatively straightforward to do that.

We can take information from BIM models, as long as we recognise that contractors are probably providing information as technical submittals that certainly M&E contractors are unlikely to have put it in BIM models. But that’s not a problem as long as you are accommodating that. And we can also use 360 photography to actually capture that information, In this example here we’ve got 4 or 5 different software applications all working together to deliver that. We’ve got a model, this has been done in Revit, and the location of the fire dampers, for example, has been identified. The COBie data is telling us where the fire dampers are and what they are.

So, we’re then tying it back to a product library, so the manufacturer’s product details there. This is real Golden Thread stuff because what we’ve got then is the information that can then be delivered to an asset manager in a simple form so that they can identify where that fire damper is and what type of wall that it’s in. And because we’ve got connections through to the Openspace 360s then it means that we’re able then to look at a schedule and it will tell us where that particular asset is in the building. So that’s the sort of findability that we think is needed. And we can then take that information and then also connect it through to the O&M information.

The O&M information can be held in Asite or projects or whatever platform has been used to collect the documents. And we can then pass that information out to maintenance so that you can actually identify which buildings that particular fire damper is installed in across a whole estate. And this then is connecting it back to SFG20 which is a brilliant library of maintenance information. So what we’re doing here is then providing it so that that can then populate the maintenance management system. The great thing now is that we’ve got a big community of people willing to collaborate. Different software companies are all now very keen to have connections between them.

The challenge is for clients to actually understand and know what to do. So therefore what we’re doing is putting together the Golden Thread Taskforce which is people who are experts with knowing what they want from systems who are also able to work with software providers. And therefore they can come together and satisfy the needs of clients. So clients can come to a cooperative of experts to then be able to pull together, maybe from a range of different tools, what they actually need. All tied around some standardised classification systems.

There’s some really new exciting stuff that’s coming out over the next few months where Uniclass, NRM,SFG20 are all being coordinated under a cooperative agreement. And what we’re interested in is anybody that wants to join that process. So, if you’re interested in the Golden Thread, in learning more and being part of what we’re doing there, put ‘Golden Thread’ in the chat. Finally what we’re doing is then applying that knowledge…

SAMUEL ADAMS George, that software that you showed up on the screen with the red colouring that said PIM on it, do you know the name of it?

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, that’s actually Active Plan that’s doing that.

RICHARD FREER To be involved in the Golden Thread Taskforce, what we normally do is give you a 15-minute one-to-one with one of the steering group so we can understand exactly what you are looking for and exactly what the Taskforce can offer you.

LARRY NICOLL It wasn’t so much a question, it’s more of a plea that when it comes to O&Ms the real problem that I’ve found is O&Ms in PDF format are not particularly helpful. Either in their original format because there may be 6 or 8 hard copy manuals all in one humungous file, so contractors don’t break it down into anything that’s really useable or useful. But also O&Ms in PDFs are not very helpful when you want to update a building. So having been responsible for legacy buildings which have been around for a long, long time you end up with O&Ms for every alteration and updating. And you are then faced with reading through multiple PDFs to try and actually find the thread of what’s happened and what’s going on.

So some sort of textual database whereby all of the sections are in a database that’s searchable and also can be updated with revisions would certainly help to read the building in terms of its history and its changing. Because you don’t want to lose anything, but by the same token we want to understand the life of a building, what’s actually been happening and when, so that the maintenance people can actually look at it and understand what they’re seeing or, more importantly, what they’re not seeing.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s great Larry, thank you for that. We do have quite an active group. We've got a work stream looking at digital handover, which incorporates also what you just talked about there, which is existing buildings and taking existing information and turning into intelligent stuff. And as part of what we're doing, we're talking with several other software companies who have got some really cool technology that we're going to be introducing in that area. So Larry, if you’re interested in joining in that discussion then you’d be more than welcome because of your background.

So collaborative projects, the point is a lot of this digital information is only really useful if you know how it’s going to be used. And therefore it’s only when you actually start to work on projects that it throws up the questions that we want to be able to, why do you want that information? Maybe doing fire strategies and things like that. So, here we’ve got a project that we’ve been doing with Ridge and RiskFlag and a number of other people for Tower Hamlets, 78 buildings. And what this is doing, we’re using the latest surveying applications. This was 3 years ago, this was NavVis the camera that was being used here by Metron the survey firm.

And what that’s doing, it’s generating spatial models which we can then use to create the secure information box drawings, but also to be able to create floor plans that include the information about where the risks are. So, here we’ve identified for a fire strategy, for example, you’re able to say what’s that space being used for and what are the measures that are in place that are actually protecting it. And the 360 photograph can be tagged with the asset data so that you’ve then got something that is then written to a database which you can then use as part of your fire risk assessment. And also tie it back to manufacturer’s product data. So, the principle here is that we’re gluing together stuff that would otherwise be separate.

Watney Market is the new project that we’re working on at the moment and we’re making it available to the wider community, so if you’re interested in learning more about what we’re doing here. This is a 1970s marketplace and we’re doing laser scanning Scan to BIM process, but it’s not really Scan to BIM, it’s Scan to 3D. But what we’re then doing is using techniques to make it possible to add the asset data into those 3D and 360 areas. So, that’s one of the residential projects and we’re looking for input from surveyors, fire engineers, contractors etc. These are the people that have already signed up for it, they’re interested in tracking what we’re doing there and also possibly contributing some of their expertise.

This is another one, we’ve got a data centre near Halifax, basically it’s a ex bank’s data centre but it’s being substantially refurbished, it’s going up from 8 gig to 200 gig. Put ‘data centre’ in the chat if you’re interested in knowing more about the project. And finally IoT and Smart. We did a presentation at the Smart Buildings conference in September, run by CIBSE, and it generated quite a lot of interest. And then we’re also now members of something called Start With Smart which is a really high level community of lots of different smart building technology providers and also consultants who we can tap you into.

And then last week we attended the Smart Buildings show and one of our Golden Thread group won an award in the summer and they were doing a presentation. And if you just look at the figures there that they’ve managed to achieve, this is at Manchester University Hospital, it’s been extraordinary. And they are now rolling that technology out to other sites, And then finally we’ve got an international initiative, some of you might know that a couple of us went to Hong kong last year and in terms of HRBs there is nowhere with more HRBs per square metre. And what we’re then doing, we’ve not got a construction industry council session, on the 12th of November we’ve been asked to present to that.

And if you’re interested potentially in selling your expertise or maybe even products, into Hong Kong and the East, Paul Sheedy is going out there next week to represent the Golden Thread Taskforce. And if you let him know what you’re interested in we may be able to make some introductions for you. if you’re interested in the international bit put ‘international’ in the chat, we can potentially do a one-to-one.

JoSEPH KOZELKA I found interesting that scanner that you had inside the existing building where you’re identifying various elements in the building, like the smoke sensors and ventilation ducts and that sort of thing, And I suppose the problem that I have is when you’re scanning these things you still need to find out anything about these various appliances. How old are they? Are they still working? What is their manufacturer? All of the information you don’t already have from a scan and if you have any comments on that.

Because we have a lot of buildings to do ourselves and we have to find a way of creating this information for a huge stock of existing buildings. So any input you can give me on that would be really helpful.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s a really good question. The approach that we’re taking using 360 photographs has been used now for about 4 years and we’ve done 15,000 spaces so it’s well proven. And a number of the big survey firms who do condition assessments, they are now moving to that because it’s 6 times faster to do a capture than it is to send people to site. Now, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to send people to site, thee’s still going to be circumstances where you do. But if it’s possible to substantially reduce the need for that then it means that people have got the time to do the detail stuff properly.

The other thing I would say is that again by being able to do it in this way it means that you can also be whilst you’re actually doing inspections you can be looking at compartmentation drawings, maybe security drawings and things like that, so you can relate the things together. And anything that you may have in the O&Ms.

RICHARD FREER Let’s go back to Alex and questions on Awaab’s Law.

ALEX OLDMAN I just wanted to finish my slide deck about more of a strategic view. One of the things I want people to think about is obviously what we’re trying to do is overlay changes in regulation here to buildings which are currently occupied. So what lots of organisations are doing at the moment and have been doing for the last 18 months or so is defining roles and responsibilities within organisations, creating damp task-force teams, reorganising directorates as appropriate. It’s also been obvious that organisations are bringing together the teams of people who look after property information within organIsations, which in my case would be the asset management teams with the repairs & maintenance teams and any other contractors as well.

So, there’s been a whole lot of reorganisation happening in the background for Awaab’s. A couple of thoughts on how to approach this problem more strategically. The first one is to identify at risk households. You need to collate information from residents, not just the tenants but any members of the household as well, obviously very young people, very old people who might be living with a tenant in the property, to identify anybody who is going to be at risk. However you define that, I’ve give the example earlier on for respiratory disorders. It’s also possible to take a property based approach across a portfolio and identify risky archetypes.

So there are certain types of properties that because of their build or construction, because of their use over time. Just anecdotally, something I’m discovering is that some retrofit activities where we’re improving the energy performance of a building actually results in it becoming more airtight which can lead to damp and mould issues if not being properly addressed and engineered out. So there is the potential that even modernisation of buildings is actually taking us back a step regarding providing healthy homes. So, you can obviously look at reports and complaints, but look at those on a pattern basis. have you got issues with a particular block of flats?

Anecdotally, I’ve heard of a customer who was using technology to identify that they had problems in a down-pipe on the outside wall of a building that was causing water to seep through the walls and producing damp inside the building. But that was happening from the top of a block of flats and slowly spreading down the building. You can obviously go in and take surveys, registered social landlords probably on a 5 year cycle for stock condition surveys, so that should be a good opportunity to pick up on damp risk in buildings. Looking at damp proof coursing.

Looking at ventilation, a particular focus on areas that produce damp, so kitchens and bathrooms where you tend to get a lot of humidity. And then another approach might be looking at energy performance certificates. So looking at properties that have low EPCs tend to imply that they may not be able to deal with holding a lot of heat and maintaining a dry environment. Not that those two are necessarily related, obviously, but again it’s a nice indicator. So, another thought about automating the processes that we’re describing here. Because as you’ve been gearing up and putting lots of people in place, one of the things that you want to do is make those teams more efficient. We’re all anticipating a large wave of complaints and reports coming in for this, so how about using AI for triaging the incoming complaints and potentially interpreting those photographs or images.

There are some nice pilots of technology out there that you can use to identify damp. So if you’re receiving a thousand photographs a day why not get an inbox and limit that down to a hundred and have a look at the most serious cases that are in there. And the last idea echoes a little bit what George was saying deploying sensors and technology. So, it would be appropriate for you to put in IoT devices, so smart sensors that look at damp and temperature, and report that back in. But one of the issues with those IoT systems often is that the data is being collated by the provider to a central platform.

And it’s a good idea to look at automating that workflow so that if there is a property which is at risk of damp then that’s pushed through to automated the creation of investigation for officers to go in and follow up or for contractors to go and remediate a problem if it’s a recurring problem. The last slide I wanted to offer up was an idea of taking a maturity or capability approach to this. So I’m suggesting that there are 4 different levels of maturity, some people might define 5 different levels of maturity, I’m quite happy to discuss and debate and evolve this idea.

But initially you might be at the point at the moment where you’re only able to manage a complaints process and your repairs and maintenance operation is very much reactive. So somebody complains about damp, you look at it, you investigate, you fix. What you might be doing it you’re a more managed approach, and I’d suggest this is where many organisations are at the moment, is they’ve got a structure in place, they’ve skilled up their taskforce, they’ve got assessors that are trained on HHSRS assessments. They’ve got teams of people who are out in buildings, not just specialist staff but general teams as well who are looking for damp. And you’ve got formal complaints and escalation process.

And you’re starting to measure performance, so you’ve got key performance indicators showing you the number of cases that you’ve got raised and how long to take to closed. As you evolve things a little bit more you might be proactively putting in sensors to properties where there are at risk households or properties where there is a potential of damp because of the archetype of the property. You might have a more formalised complaints process as well, and this is generally speaking a more active approach.

You might have defined at that point key performance indicators, but also operational performance indicators showing you how you’re doing within that 3 day period, within that 24 hour period, within that 10 day period that we’ve been describing earlier as well.
So you can catch how well processes are running in flight. And then the last idea, optimised is really making sure that damp and mould is managed, and all of these housing risks actually are managed across the whole mission, that you’ve got strategic goals, that you’ve got good alignment with what the business plan is doing and how you’re providing services to customers.

That’ you’ve looking very much at an enhanced complaints management process and you’re not just measuring key performance indicators, but you’re also looking to improve that service overall by looking at how you can fine tune it. So once you’ve optimised it going beyond that how can we do better, what else can we do to our properties when we’re commissioning new buildings to make sure that they’re meeting our strategic objectives there. So, that’s just a bit more of a strategic approach to Awaab’s Law.

RICHARD FREER So, we’re doing a workshop on Awaab’s Law and that is 13th November at 11am.

GEORGE STEVENSON Also, if anybody wants a one to one on that I’m sure that Alex and we could accommodate that as well. Matt, could you just explain what we’re doing within the PFI group? We’ve got a date set up, if anybody is interested in the PFI side of things. And it’s not specifically PFI, PFIs are a very structured process, so digital records are important.

MATT WILKIE To be fair, I’m dealing with a lot of handbacks at the moment and a lot of the anomalies relating to contracts. So the PFI/PPP group is going to be talking about standardisation of not only trying to get everything joined up so that everybody has the same terminology that can be mapped between different things. You’ve got your Uniclass, COBie or whatever information, so whatever you’ve got you can actually relate it to those specific assets easily and specific tasks. So whether you’re doing your PPMs at least you know how that links in to everything else.

And that’s a much bigger piece that’s going on with George as well, because it’s not just the PFI the PPP, but it goes back to everybody from as-built to demolition. Everybody gets tied together through those sort of processes and standardisations to simplify it for everybody else. Alongside that I’m looking at how we can improve asset strategies which with Active Plan and myself we’re looking a lot more on the 360 and the benefits of 360 data, how that interfaces with things like CAFM, asset management, lifecycle modelling and how we pull everything together as part of the Golden Thread.

Because if we can pull all of the data into the same space and with better information management it will make everybody’s life easier, wherever you are in the chain, depending on what you’re doing. You make it easier for other people and then the information you receive is much better as well. And one of the things which I’m heavily involved in at the moment is handback analysis and preparations. A lot of the contracts I work with are in the process of handbacks. The good thing about this, it’s not just the PFI and PPP, but if you’re a trust or a local authority or somebody that’s taken on a contract from somebody else, the same information is very, very relevant.

Because a lot of the problems that we would face in handback are in all of the contracts. So, it is a constant thread in the FM industry, even from build, because if the build information is not correct then everything going forward isn’t correct. But this then ties in to Regulation 38 about the handover of good quality data, but it also starts with knowing what data you’re expecting before you sign it off and agree to it. Which then follows on to another area which is fire compliance which ties in the things like the fire stopping, fire dampers, fire doors, what that looks like, how the legislation is interpreted, how it’s utilised.

Because there is some confusion on when do you change the door. Do you need to change the door? Do you need to change the wall if you change the door? So, it’s a lot more complicated than a lot of people realise. Also, the ownership because you can have a tenant building with a tenant’s reporting to a local authority or the NHS. And then the fire strategy can sit with the FM and then the overall building insurance sit with an SPV. So there’s multiple tiers there, but I think the clarity around this is on who owns it, why they own it, why it’s important that everybody does their bit. Because you can’t align your fire strategy, you’re compliance unless you’ve got all stakeholders heavily involved on it. And that’s just a quick overview, it’s one of those where there’s a lot of subsections within each.

GEORGE STEVENSON I’ve learned a huge amount from Matt over the last couple of years and the key thing about this is that although he’s talking about PFI, actually all of the things that they have to do in PFI are the things that we should be doing now in all buildings. Because from a contractual point of view they get heavily penalised if they’ve not kept the right digital records. And, to be honest, they still don’t do it, in some cases that still happens. But the key thing there is actually looking at the procedures so that we’ve got those.

Mat, I think the key thing here for the next step is if people are interested in learning more about the digital process and digital records you’re capturing on that moment and that we’re working on as a small group.

MATT WILKIE That’s it, it’s to bring it all together but also in a format that’s easy for anybody to understand. I fully understand that someone who works financially would not understand the same technical stuff I do, the same as I don’t know everything about a fire strategies and fire door, so I look for specialists in those fields. But it’s understanding what’s missing and knowing how to approach other people and say look, I haven’t got this, what do I need to do? And I think that’s the bit that we’re trying to get everybody on the same page that can have those conversations.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s a great intro to Ron Hedger.

RON HEDGER That’s a wonderful segue, although having been listening in I’m not entirely sure how my contribution will move things forward if at all. I’m a fire safety consultant, fire engineer, my primary role is in developing design fire strategies for new and altered buildings, but also developing what I call retrospective fire protection strategies. Which opens up a huge can of worms from my point of view, but not necessarily applicable at the moment. George and I were talking yesterday, that was my first introduction to this forum so i’m very new to the wider BIM process.

But asked me to comment on the 360 photography which is more of an overlap of PO? 1 hr 16 mins 31 secs evolution than anything else at the moment. When I’m carrying out a survey to try and reverse engineer what the fire precautions in an existing building are supposed to have been or are supposed to be. I now use a 360 camera for the whole of the survey for much the same reasons as George was describing. Previously I might have to revisit a complex building 2, 3, or 4 times to pick up on aspects of the building that I didn’t know I needed to look at at the time without an iterative process.

Now I can short circuit that considerably by having a 360 record of the survey that I carried out. I had a very quick introduction to the Active Plan software yesterday and within that, again as more of an overlap, a lot of the information that I was being shown concerning fire precautions are directly things that I would be specifying within a retrospective fire protection strategy. Such as use of spaces, provision of compartmentation and fire stopping, provision of escape routes and then active and passive systems within that.

So the provision of the Golden Thread information incorporating all of that information in a 3D format might in fact be quite useful to me if I were to be developing a new design fire strategy for an alteration or an extension to an existing building. In those situations I usually find I have to carry out a site visit to get a feel for the building, whereas if I were able to see a 3D visualisation of the building and the facilities but already provided, that would probably remove that need as well. So that would probably be an advantage to me in that development process.

GEORGE STEVENSON What we’re also doing on the 10th of November which is the one that we’re looking at with PFI, we’re also going to be including a discussion around fire strategies, retrospective fire strategies. Because what we want to try and do is make it so that we can automate or simplify some of those things, to standardise them.

RICHARD FREER If you’re interested in getting involved in the PFI fire strategy that’s at 11am on the 10th of November. If you put the names in the chat and we’ll be in touch.

GEORGE STEVENSON And the interesting thing about that is that if we combine fire strategy, smoke strategy, which is basically how I was introduced to Ron because of our smoke control people, and also the other aspects of security, that’s where we’re at.

RON HEDGER Just a couple of final observations. I suppose working backwards the primary one is the smoke control strategy is an integral subset of the fire strategy or fire protection strategy. and the fire protection strategy would incorporate that and all other passive and active fire precautions. Moving one step back form there, identifying how to automate or streamline the development of a retrospective fire strategy. There is a small issue involved there at the moment in that there is no definition or specification for what should be included in a retrospective fire strategy.

And it comes under the general umbrella of if you as two fire safety experts what they should have in a retrospective fire strategy you’ll get three opinions. I’m currently working as part of the BSI committee on producing guidance on what should be included within a fire strategy document which is to include retrospective fire strategy. But we’re not anywhere close to be able to put anything out at this stage. My involvement being that I’m very interested in streamlining the process as it forms a large proportion of the work that I do.

And I have received challenges from clients who didn’t that that the document I produced was what they thought as a retrospective fire strategy, but were unable to guide me towards where they had got their opinions from.

GEORGE STEVENSON Just finally, this is a bit of an advert for the fact that we’ve got the Golden Thread Taskforce is actually getting out there in quite a big way now. So, at London Build we’re involved in three sessions. So if you’re going to London Build then please do get in touch with us because we can catch up. And quite a few of the Golden Thread Taskforce members are actually going to be there, so it’s part of the community process.

RICHARD FREER Our next monthly forum will be on the 3ed of December. Thank you for coming today.

CHAT

Phil Thompson (External)…. Noticed quite a few AI notetakers on the call, many organisations don't allow these, what's BIM4s policy?

Chukwudi Ezenna Obi (External)…. Strong point! Many note-takers are just "takers." The issue is that they tend to misrepresent the information they take, which defeats the purpose of such sessions. The most basic thing to do is to lend an ear and listen—also the most graceful.

Preetam Deshmukh (External).. Gordon could you please share the link for the AI related news . It’s a very interesting development . I’m not ai robot

Ron Hedger (External)… I appears that Chatham House Rules can only apply in a face-to-face situation, as this stipulates that information can be used but must not be attributed to a person, place or time. Anything on line is immensely vulnerable.

Karl Gasson (External)…. question 2 is inadequate replace in what sort of building?

Peter Salisbury (External)…. Awaabs law specifically applies to Social Housing - so Councils and HAs's https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/awaabs-law-guidance-for-social-landlords

Mark Handy (External)….We could probably save some bandwidth in our meeting connection by limiting the video feeds to only the speakers

Samuel Adams (External)… What software is this? The RED PIM one?

Stefani Hadi (Unverified)… The trouble is when you have 5/6 software in a single association and trying to keep a golden thread of information.

Taylor Hammond (External)… olden Thread - yes very keen to be involved in the collaborative taskforce, as we have a growing independent platform for property records NBR.UK.com

David Ives (External)…. We always issue O&M's in "Native Format" and Single PDFs per item.

Massive PDFs with Hyperlinks dont work

bernard hornung (External)… London Quarter offer the service of quantifying air loss through fire doors, flat entrance doors and other apertures, testing the integrity of compartmentation, using the Portascanner AIRTIGHT developed by Coltraco Ultrasonics and we would welcome inclusion in the Golden Thread Group.

Peter Salisbury (External)… Well worth specifying exactly how you want to receive O&M data in your ER's

Alozie Ohuonu (Unverified)… Hi Larry Nicoll - in the interim of that textural tool - i've been looking at Egnyte which looks like a great machine searchabe tool that pools docs accross a organisations data sets. If you can afford it https://www.egnyte.com/

Stefani Hadi (Unverified)…Do we have a form standardised form & guidance and notes for the Awaab assessment?

Peter Salisbury (External)… Guidance here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/awaabs-law-guidance-for-social-landlords There is no" Awaab assessment form" as such. It's about identifying and responding to property hazards as defined in the HHSRS>. All Emergency hazards plus Damp and Mould from this coming Monday.

Academic Summary – BIM in Asset Management October Monthly Forum (22-10-2025)

Purpose & Context

The October BIM in Asset Management Forum examined how digital information can be made useful throughout a building’s operational life.
Participants included asset managers, consultants, digital specialists and client representatives. Discussion centred on the practical management of asset data, its accuracy and updating, and how these processes support compliance, safety and efficiency in facilities management.

1. Making BIM Data Usable for Operations

• Attendees discussed the continuing difficulty of ensuring that the information produced during design and construction can actually be used by FM teams.
• Participants emphasised the importance of accuracy, accessibility and trust in operational data.
• Several noted that existing portfolios often rely on incomplete or inconsistent records, which limit the usefulness of digital information.

2. Demonstrating Traceability and Compliance

• The group discussed the growing expectation that building owners and managers can evidence decisions and updates throughout the asset’s life.
• Contributors highlighted that traceability requires recording not only what information is held but when and why it changes.
• Maintaining accurate, auditable information was identified as essential for accountability and safety.

3. Exchanging and Coordinating Information Between Systems

• Participants described problems when transferring information between BIM models, CAFM systems and spreadsheets.
• Inconsistent naming of elements, different file structures and varied approaches between organisations cause duplication and data loss.
• The group agreed that clearer, shared definitions and conventions would help reduce these problems.

4. Automation and Digital Tools

• Examples were shared of digital platforms and analytics used to monitor performance and maintenance schedules.
• Participants warned that such tools are only as reliable as the information entered into them and that poor-quality data can lead to misleading results.
• Cyber-security and ownership of operational information were noted as continuing concerns.

5. Cultural and Organisational Change

• The discussion highlighted that technology alone will not solve information-management issues.
• Many FM teams still depend on manual or locally managed systems, partly because of habit and confidence in personal control of data.
• Participants stressed that leadership, training and consistent communication are required to build trust in shared information systems.

6. Showing the Value of Digital Asset Information

• Attendees reflected on how to evidence the benefits of well-managed digital data.
• Reported advantages included reduced time spent locating information, fewer reactive maintenance issues and smoother compliance checks.
• Participants observed that demonstrating these tangible benefits helps justify ongoing investment in digital processes.

7. Collaboration Across the Supply Chain

• Contributors agreed that collaboration between designers, contractors and FM teams remains limited.
• Effective handovers depend on early coordination and shared understanding of information requirements.
• Suggestions included aligning terminology and responsibilities between design and operations teams.

Emerging Themes

• Operational data must be maintained as a living resource, not a static handover package.
• Recording the history of decisions and data updates is increasingly necessary for accountability.
• Consistency in file naming and terminology would help reduce information loss across systems.
• Cultural change and capability building are as important as technological solutions.
• Demonstrating clear operational benefits encourages wider adoption of digital asset management practices.

Key Insights & Lessons Learned – BIM in Asset Management October Monthly Forum (22-10-2025)