BIM in Asset Management Monthly Forum 25-03-2026

BIM IN ASSET MANAGEMENT MONTHLY FORUM 25-03-2026

GEORGE STEVENSON What we’re trying to do today is to look at things from another aspect than we would normally do. We’re looking at the golden thread from a retrospective basis as well, so looking at things as to how we can produce something that illustrates what good looks like, even if it wasn’t originally created in that way. There’s been some lively discussions over these last few weeks with the various different workstream meetings, particularly around the use of classification systems which we’ve promoting obviously right from the start very rigorously.

But what’s become apparent to us, in particular this has started in the US, where the organisation that is behind Omniclass, which is the classification equivalent for Uniclass in the UK, they seem to have aligned with a for profit organisation and they’re now starting to charge for the use of the classification system which I think has got a lot of people very wound up in the US. So in other words, if you follow the classification and you put in your documentation the classification reference that was originated maybe in the brief, their proposition is that you have to pay them a licence fee for doing that.

It’s apparently been taken to court in Canada and it’s been struck down, or something like that, but it’s still a big problem to people in the States. And Nick Nisbet, who is one of our community, has been trying to identify whether this could happen with Uniclass. Does anybody have any observations on that? Is anybody aware of that happening?

CHANDAN SUTRADHAR Classification is really a big challenge nowadays everywhere in the world. Even while we have a project starting from the beginning and the template like Uniclass, uniform it, assembly code and in the end while we’re mapping the actual classification with the digital twin platform. So it’s really a key discussion. I believe we need important thought individually so that it can be framed out. Because classification or dependency from the beginning to the end of anything, like for the procurement or digital twin or for mapping the parameters, in actually BMA systems or the sensor or whatever.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think we need to be looking at this from a point of view of what the industry is willing to accept.Because it does appear that private equity organisations are getting involved in this, and as a result of that they would be discouraging people from using classification systems.

PIERRE VENTER My opinion is it’s a big pile of money. If you take every single project all around the world using the same classification codes, like Chandan said we use it from the start to the finish, sometimes we don’t. But yes, the moment that venture capital companies get in to doing those, there it is. What’s it going to do for us? I think it ends up people will go and find another one. And that’s the worst one, it’s because we need one standard as far as possible.

PHIL THOMPSON Just on the classification systems, I’m always keen to stress the observation, and I know that this group is focused around asset management, but there always seems little point in clarifying the asset until you classify the product because the product comes first, it’s only an asset once its built. Obviously in my role with ETIM UK * Ireland, that’s a classification system which is widely used and is an open standard. But I just wondered if anyone had anymore thoughts, or has been working with classification systems on products before it becomes an asset.

GEORGE STEVENSON You and I have spoken about this before, Phil. I think the asset comes before the product because you’re specifying what that asset should be and should do and then the product is matched to the asset.

PHIL THOMPSON I’m not sure that I could agree with that because an asset, in the context of buildings it’s installed, owned by the client.

GEORGE STEVENSON OK, not in this context. Let’s not dive in to that at the moment.

PHIL THOMPSON Well, some of that’s important. OK, this group is about asset management What’s the definition of asset within this group?

GEORGE STVENSON Does anybody here as a designer think that they need to have a classification system against something that will become an asset? I think we’re getting tied up on the term asset here, Phil.

PHIL THOMPSON OK, that’s why I asked what’s the definition of asset in this group.

MATTHEW CUNLIFFE Certainly getting back on to the payment for a classification system, at the end of the day we want something universal. We want a single source of classification that everybody can use and everybody can read. And if you’re going to start paying for things this will not get people adopting, which a lot of people still need to do, especially on the legacy estate because they use their own thing. So yeah, we've got to be careful of those barriers.

IAN UPTON I’d always say refer back to ISO19650 for asset classifications and descriptions. And more importantly, obviously a common language around classifications, whatever that asset might be, whatever the product might be, is paramount to moving forward within any group like this. So I would always refer back to ISO19650, what does that define? Is it an asset or it’s defined as a product? And then is the common language correct? Do you agree or disagree with it? Have a common language and then move forward with it.

GEORGE STEVENSON Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think 19650 actually is a classification system. It’s a process and it will refer to the classification system which, in many cases, is Uniclass.

IAN UPTON Yes, so is that not the answer? Do we use Uniclass?

GEORGE STEVENSON Well, not if somebody monetises Uniclass. If they start doing exactly the same here that they’re doing in the US where everybody in the supply chain would have to pay to conform, if they put into their documentation that they’re complying with Uniclass reference so and so, that’s the point.

VIKTORIA ROY I want to say that Phil raised a very right question about what is considered to be an asset. And to be coming form the perspective that I worked on different sides: the client, the contractor and the architect. Everything is an asset, it depends from which perspective you are looking at. We with BIM and ISO standards we’re trying to use the classification.

And talking on Phil’s point, when we’re classifying the asset there is an opportunity to work with One Click LCA because of the parallel classification. Maybe they’re not a classification system, but we can work with them to make sure that first of all they’re using the correct classification on the project. And this is project related, we can’t work with them as an industry, they are within the industry. But on each project where I’m working with One Click LCA we do use the Uniclass classification and One Click LCA recognise the classification. However, the product classification itself is a different story and it definitely needs to be brought forward.

PIERRE VENTER The ISO55000 deals with asset management, so we’ve got the BSEN equivalent. That’s the part where you can start off from.

PAUL TONER With regards to the classification, I think because NBS hold it and they sell Chorus for specification rating, I think there’s a high possibility that that could become chargeable at some point. Now what we’ve encountered in other projects is that the likes of airport authorities and things like that have their own bespoke classification system, which is generated by them, for them. And another default classification we can all fall back on is probably going to be the IFC classifications.

It’s a bit more vague if you go to IFC 4, but it’s better than two times three, so there’s a bit more scope for classifying different systems. Maybe not as much as products, but there is alternatives. Bespoke is one and IFC classification is another.

FRANCO PITTONI It’s very simple, the classification system is a method of communicating in a way that there are no misunderstandings. So it’s like being charged to use an english word by the Oxford Dictionary, so it’s crazy.

ANTHONY TAYLOR I just wondered if the work includes the SFG20 lot because they’ve got a huge list of stuff that must be classified in some way or another. And if we’re dealing with it perhaps they ought to be on the group.

GEORGE STEVENSON They are part of this group, they’ve been attending. They’re charging now as well, so I think that’s part of the issue actually.

GORDON PRINGLE They’ve just been bought, that’s why. Venture capitalists have just taken them off of BESA because it was BESA 100% owned which is a non-charitable, but of course they sold it because they wanted to make money.

GEORGE STEVENSON The normal session that we have basically to just look at the engagement that we’ve got as a group with regulators. This was something that the MHCLG said and also we’ve had this from the Building Safety Regulator. So one of the challenges that everybody has got is there are so many different sets of legislation that landlords, and all of us really, are wrestling with the overwhelming level of information needs. And we’re still not in a situation where things are smooth.

We’re also starting to see the impact of this at Gateways as well, so things not really working out the way they should. But the important thing is that it’s not just whether the regulator is taking action, the industry is taking action as well. So that’s one that’s underway at the moment, and this one is talked about a lot at the moment where Mitie are being sued by Mace for fire dampers.

What we’ve also found is that when we have asked the community whether people are actually taking this seriously, they’re saying that a substantial number of senior people don’t believe that they are aware of their duties under the Building Safety Act. So one of the key things that we’ve got to do is persuade senior directors that that is important. I had a really interesting conversation yesterday with a consultant, a large consultancy, who when we were talking about the golden thread they said which golden thread? And I said well, the golden thread, and I described. And they said well, the way that we look at it, there’s two golden threads and we go for just what’s legally compliant.

And that’s what they’re advising their clients to which I think is possibly part of the challenge that we’ve got as an industry because if we’re actually picking over that I think are we going for the minimum? We’re probably not going to afford to go for the maximum, but what is the default there? So the minimum as far as I’m concerned should be building regs. And if we look at building regs for fire safety, what’s actually required is that you need an as-built plan that shows where all of those elements are. And that’s really what we’ve been saying for the last 2 or 3 years.

And we need to accommodate and make sure that the locations, for example, of all of the safety critical assets are actually represented. And basically the legislation, or certainly some of the legislation, requires the responsible person to check that they’ve had all of the information that they need at handover to ensure that the building is safe. And my interpretation of that is that that should be what is defined in Regulation 38. And also the contractor has got to provide the information. They’ve got to sign a declaration to say that they’re provided everything.

Now, if we’re looking at minimum compliance that can be interpreted in all sorts of ways. For example, on this which is a real example of one of the projects that we’ve reviewed, you’ll see that the location of the fire dampers is internal. Now I don’t know what you think, but I think just saying that there’s fire dampers somewhere in the building is insufficient. The same with the fire stopping, the fire stopping locations was at all levels. Now you might then argue that well, it’s in a drawing somewhere. So then on this particular project we looked at this and we found the fire stopping drawing.

And when we then queried that with the builder that was in the O&M, we said well, this fire stopping drawing, how can anybody use it? It’s in a PDF that’s just everything is overlaid on each other. And when we questioned the contractor he said well, the client said it was OK. I went back to the client and asked them and they said well, we didn’t look at this, it would have been the employer’s agent. So I spoke to the employer’s agent and they said well, there was a fire stopping drawing, we didn’t look at it. We’re not employed to read the information, we’re only required to log that the documents have been provided.

Now that’s what minimum compliance ends up with if we’re not very careful. And I don’t know what the community thinks, but we think that’s not right. So what does good look like? If you’re a client and potentially you want to make sure that you’re not maybe going for the Rolls Royce, but you want to make sure you’re doing something that is actually useful. One way of addressing that, that’s why we’ve got this golden thread community together. So what we’re seeking to do is to become a group that is able to share their knowledge and have a common view as to what good looks like.

And they way in which we’re doing that is be bringing together people that have got experience and are willing to work together. Nobody has got all of the answers. We might have fire engineers, we might have people that are looking at compartmentation and the like. And then they can be brought together with software companies as well. So we end up with a group of people that have got some tested solutions, can agree to the specification as to what good looks like and what should be provided. And then that can then get mapped against what clients are looking for. So it becomes a trusted group collaboration of people that can use classified libraries.

So it means that we’ve got, for example, the GS1 standards that Phil is very much supporting. And also then make sure that we’ve got specifications and standards. We’ve also got coordination with modelling applications, reality capture, a whole range of different tools to enable all of that to really work. And in doing this what we’re trying to do is move the golden thread beyond simply compliance, we’re trying to look at it as a business benefit.

So I’d like to hand over to Paul Sheedy who has pulled together a report that you’ll see here, this was published last week in PCB Today. So we’re getting some traction with this.  Paul, can I ask you to explain what we’re doing?

PAUL SHEEDY I know we’re a group here of very, very specialist people in niche areas, but what I really wanted to try and do in putting up this white paper was aimed not at people like us but at the C-suite of organisations so they actually get it. So there’s no BSI standard XYZ, it’s written really to get to C-suite to embrace the golden thread, to look at this as a business opportunity. Where I am now on this, we are where we are, but we’ve got to go a lot, lot further.

We went over to Hong Kong just over a year ago, but also the work I’ve been doing in Shanghai, Shanghai is like a million miles ahead of where London is right now, digitalised things on a different scale. And what I want to try and do is take where we are today, take this golden thread, get the C-suites or organisations to understand why it is a business benefit to them and also push the insurers to understand that if you have an organisation that’s taken this on seriously, then they should look at how they lower the insurance premiums of the organisation.

But beyond this, once you start digitalising the building in terms of what the assets are, how well things are running, you then get much more granular detail on how you can start lowering the energy use of buildings. And I think there’s a lot of areas here where, one of my areas of speciality is in fire safety and what haunts me beyond words, there’s buildings in the City of London that we’ve visited and pointed out that two-thirds of the sprinkler systems were not actually working. And these are brand new, we all know the names of these buildings.

And 6 months later we went back and they hadn’t increased the pressure in the system 6 months later. And what I’m trying to move forward to, my niche is how we digitalise all of this stuff. And then push that to an insurance company, say have a digital twin of a building, they know what the assets are in there, they know that everything that is in there is actually working. That when things break they have been fixed correctly. But we wrote this out really to help them understand why this is a key thing that just goes forward, it’s a business opportunity for them.

And it will increase the value of their assets. And the way that we put this together is to get through that this is not something that they should fear, it’s not another piece of legislation to go oh, here we go again, more cost etc. And it’s up to all of us on this group to take into consideration exactly what’s there on the screen right now, what the sort of cost reduction is going to be by embracing this correctly, by pushing forward with getting your digital twins in place. By pushing forward by making sure that your asset registry is correct. And digitalising all aspects of what’s happening in your building.

GEORGE STEVENSON If anybody wants a copy of the report and you’ve not had it, then if you just put ‘white paper’ in the chat and we’ll share that with you. Also, if you’re willing to contribute to this and become part of it, then if you put ‘tasks’ in the chat. Because what we’re trying to do is to align the tasks, the way in which that golden thread information is used. And we’ve got a group that we’re doing with Franco Pittoni, but also with Morta, to actually turn this in to an auditable task information delivery plan. So that the golden thread moves beyond from being just a concept to being something that is part of the process.

RICHARD FREER Has anybody got any points or comments that they want to make on what you’ve heard so far?

ANTHONY TAYLOR Just to make note, I’ve set up a group under a CLC hat to try and define what as-built information actually means. Because when I started asking, it means all sorts of completely different things. And one of the things that really worries me is the accuracy of the information that’s going in to these things. Whether it’s paper, whether it’s PDF. We’ve got to invent a process to feed in to this that is verifying the information as well. I’ll write to George afterwards and invite you on to the group.

RICHARD FREER If anybody is interested in joining that group defining what as-built is, put ‘as-built’ in the chat and we can then send your details through to Anthony about that.

JONATHAN HALLAM I think it was quite a good point in terms of the levels of where the location is. In terms of where you showed about internal or where people put all, I’ve seen that quite a lot of times in terms of where what levels information should be put on. And that’s what I think needs to be more clearly defined against. I think we even had it in the AI call talked about templates.

And to me it’s about when you’ve got your list of documentation, most likely what you’ll find on TDIPs and IDPs is going in that piece of file there should always be having something at a room level or a floor level, not somebody putting it at the building level when it should be more accurate. I always think of it that if you’ve got somebody fixing a broken window, but then you’re not going in to a building with 500…well, probably some of the ones which was mentioned in London there are more windows to find.

NATA ZAMAN As a programme, I think one of my biggest struggles has been the information the hospital will need once it’s built at handover is different to the information that we would need as a programme in order to improve the learning. So it’s specifying where do you draw the line, where do you say or specify what information we need as a programme for the main contractor to provide to us and what the scheme needs at a building level in order to personalise those buildings. So it would be interesting to see how we can utilise our brains in this room and beyond.

GEORGE STEVENSON Very much so, as you know we’ve got a healthcare working group. But the important thing there is that a lot of the things aren’t just for healthcare. So fire safety, for example, goes across many different areas.

DAVE WILLIAMS To add, following on from Anthony, is that everyone looks at the processes, looks at the information, looks at how we can do this. And hardly anyone thinks about how they’re going to resource doing that. And I just thought it’s worth mentioning that, that it’s often one forgotten thing. That everyone says yes, we need to do this, we need to do that and no one allocates any resource. And so we’ve got lovely processes and no one to actually follow those processes.

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely and that’s why the work that Franco is doing is so important because what we’re doing is identifying what the tasks are and who should be doing them. Your point is well made, so anybody that agrees with Dave put ‘tasks’ in the chat.

DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah because it is definitely always the problem that they have’t figured how many resources they’re going to need to be able to manage dealing with all of this information.

JOHN MORROW In regards to the collation and resourcing matters that David mentioned. Even with a team of fire surveyors we found that a lot of the tasks that we were undertaking really should have been undertaken by the contractor prior to handover. So as David said a very good point, resourcing is always a massive issue.

GEORGE STEVENSON So broadly what is happening is that we’re still working as if we were 5 years ago. So we’re using manual methods to do a lot of those things, which is the point that John’s just made. And what 5 years ago the risk was that big and the required information was probably that big. We’ve now got, from a legal perspective, far greater risks and also I think we’ve learned a lot more about what we need to know. And therefore the amount of information is much bigger and because of the regulations you’ve got to have the evidence.

So one of the things that we need to reinforce is yes, we want to be compliant, but on the other hand you want assurance that the building is going to be safe. And the relationship between the three is often around spaces and assets. So that’s also true, what’s legally required, what’s morally required and also reputation comes in to this as well. So again, if we can have some consistency in terms of the way things are coordinated, making sure that everybody is using the same space references for example. And also that they’re referencing the same systems and the same assets.

That’s why the classification is so important in all of this. And it’s also a matter of looking at what’s the purpose of the information. Is it for statutory reasons? Is it operationally critical as well? And also from an organisational perspective. And then finally on that, fire safety, energy and infrastructure. So making sure that we’ve actually got that type of information at handover. Now what we’ve been doing is trying to look at the whole aspect, what Anthony said there is what does as-built mean. At digital handover we’ve got quite a strong community of residential people.

So if you’re involved in residential and you would like to be engaged in what we’re doing here put ‘residential’ in the chat and we’ll invite you to the next meeting which is in about 2 weeks time. We’ve also got the healthcare group that Nata mentioned. And we’ve got the digital handover group, I think there’s a meeting tomorrow where we’re looking at the O&M side of things. We’ve got an active group looking at education. Now, education is an interesting one in that the Department for Education has produced very tight specifications that the contractors and designers working on their schemes are delivering.

But one of the frustrations that they’ve got is that the schools that are receiving that information don’t seem to be using it. And part of the reason for that we’ve identified is that the information that’s needed by the schools is different than the information that is being delivered through the design and construction process. So what we’ve been trying to do is to come at it from the other perspective. And we’ve got a workstream, that’s part of the task of this workstream to actually help become the definer of that information.

And one of the challenges that I think we’ve got generally is that the information that is perhaps delivered in the BIM models. In that particular case you’ve got CAD data which in principle should be coming from the BIM models. We’ve got some COBie data, you’ve got O&Ms and you’ve got 360 photographs. And all of those things have been created separately in many cases, in isolation to each other. And challenge with that is then if anybody is going to audit and review it - it is done manually.So therefore that exercise means that a lot of the checking that needs to happen doesn’t happen. And secondly it then becomes quite difficult for people to actually use it.

So what we’re really doing is going from the aspect of saying how can we federate a lot of this information so that it’s actually flowing more automatically. We need to move away from the situation where people are having to tie things together manually. So what we’re looking for is examples of situations where the information has been properly federated. It makes it auditable, it’s connected and then it’s more easily found. So the approach that we’re following with that in this particular example, is to take the information from the models and extract it into a coordinated database so that it can be validated at that point.

But then the information that was in the O&Ms is also extracted from the technical submittals, so that becomes an important part of the process. And then finally we’re using 360 photographs to actually identify where these particular things are. So on new projects, this is what that looks like. So in this particular case study the contractor has worked closely with the FM to define exactly what’s needed. And in this case we’re using it to identify where the safety critical assets are. So these fire dampers aren’t simply being said that they’re in the building somewhere, t’s actually showing where they are.

I’m showing this through the Active Plan application, not to promote the Active Plan application but it’s to show that if we’ve got properly coordinated data, we’re just visualising at the moment through this tool the COBie data. So the COBie data tells us which space those fire dampers are, it tells us what the coordinates are of those. So when we then click on that it’s actually taking us to a schedule, again a COBie schedule that’s come from the models and the associated documentation. So that when you then query that, that particular view was taken from OpenSpace.

And because it’s all classified there should be no work involved in glueing this together, as long as people have followed the right information. And the documentation about it, that is not held in a separate set of files, that’s coming through from a product library that the manufacturer can keep up to date. So this is an example of what good looks like. And it’s also Anthony mentioned earlier SFG20, this is then coordinating with SFG20 which is the maintenance standard, so we’ve got the flow through of information in that way. So this is a good example of different software applications all working together.

And then later, this is on the same project, the FM has gone in and they’ve taken their own 360 photos of the finished building. And they’ve then used that to then keep this up to date. It’s a PFI so it’s 25 years in making and they’ve therefore got their own interpretation of that that they can then use to send people to site to carry out works safely.They can do the risk assessments much more effectively. And in this case you’ve got all of the equipment that’s in the classrooms. Again, what we’re doing here, we’re not doing any new work, it’s information that is then also just being glued together.

And then here we’ve got an example of a project that is a retrospective project. So this information probably should have been glued together during the design and construction process, but again it was delivered as separate information. For example, we’ve got here the fire alarm zones and those have then been taken and then produced as an interactive fire strategy plan where each of the spaces then is an intelligent space that knows what it is, it knows what equipment it contains. Again, simply because of classification and coordinated data. But we’ve extracted the information from the O&Ms to be able to create this,

So this also allows you to bring in other files, for example, like CAD files. Here, for example, you’re able to see the two things. What we’re then doing here is we’re bringing in information that was in the O&Ms just as schedules. So here for example we’ve got what that space is being used for, it’s a battery store. And that’s why it’s got a 2-hour fire door on it. But the 2-hour fire door was simply referenced in a schedule. So we’ve extracted the information from what was in the O&M documentation and recreated what ideally should have been done during the design & construction period.

And here we’re reading the information from the installation schedules and also the ironmongery schedules. So we’ve got a combination of the ironmongery and the door information. So you’ve then got something that can then be used to say well, when that product needs maybe repairing you know what the door closer was. Without having to go and reference lots of different documents. And similarly, we’ve done this with the fire stopping report. So if we go back to what I was showing at the beginning about the fire stopping information being at all levels, this is clearly at a better level of detail.

And this is very common now, thankfully, what people are doing is when they install the fire stopping they’re actually producing an individual report for each fire stopping asset with a serial number against it and a little pin on an image of a drawing. Now, tick in the box compliance, yes we provided the locations, but how on earth is anybody going to actually use that. There are 1,500 fire stopping assets in this particular building and the only way of finding that out would be to open up every single file and try and work out where that is.

So what we’ve done is, this is reverse engineering, we’ve taken the information from the PDFs and we’ve created a COBie file from it with the tag number and also it’s location. And we’ve then taken that and turned it in to digital information in the database so we can then see the interactive fire damper information and the fire stopping information and the fire doors information, all in the same environment. Now by doing that it means that the O&M information is actually able to be glued together and used. So the FM, for example, that may be considering having some work done in this area is able to see the most current and joined up information so that they can avoid the risks.

So finally, unless things get checked we don’t think that they’re really going to improve. Because part of the issue is that checking the O&M information that’s been delivered by contractors, for a client to do that is an onerous task. And it can take weeks and months when you’re under pressure to sign off, because you want the certificate of completion so you can occupy the building. So everybody is under pressure to do this and the only ay really of doing it now is through automation. So what this is going on to show is what the team have been doing within the AI group to actually automate a lot of this process. The way in which we’re doing that is in three stages.

First of all we’re actually validating the BIM data to actually check that the BIM data does contain the information that it was supposed to contain. And we’ve then gone on…the fact is that the BIM models will only contain the things that have been put in the BIM models, understandably. And the things that get put in the BIM models are often design information, not the detailed information that an installation contractor does. That information is often captured in the health & safety file and the O&Ms.

And the difficulty with that is that unless you’ve got a methodology of checking that the O&M information is there and extracting the information from it, it becomes a silo in itself. So what we’ve done is created a three stage process. And the first step is to check that the registers, the documents that are supposed to be provided that have been named in the registers and the schedules are actually in the files. Now it’s quite surprising that we found that’s often not the case. Then, looking at the content of each work package to check that it satisfies a pre-agreed criteria.

And the third step is to give a report back for each work package identifying what’s missing. Now, that combination of process should give you a list of the things that the supply chain, the main contractor says that they’ve actually installed in the building. The third step is then to be able to use 360 asset verification to check that what was promised has actually been delivered. So we’ve got a three stage way of creating a validated process.

RICHARD FREER You said on that last slide about a competent person. Is that a competent person, where do they come from?

GEORGE STEVENSON I think we could talk for half an hour on this.

RICHARD FREER No, you’re putting forward this as a process. Is this a process that we can do? Are you proposing that as a process that we do?

GEORGE STEVENSON Yes, so the point is, what we’re basically doing. One of the challenges is that the law has been set up so that the legal responsibility is not actually explicit. It’s down to a responsible person having the right level of competence to be able to appoint people that are competent to do the job.So it becomes quite a challenge to work through. So what we’re trying to do is to identify that information set and then turn it in to reusable standards.

RICHARD FREER Who is we? Is this a Taskforce thing?

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, the Taskforce.

RICHARD FREER So the Taskforce would be supplying the competent person.

GEORGE STEVENSON It would be informing what the competent person needs to be. But yes, certainly within the Taskforce we’ve got lots of competent people and what we want to do is bring them together with other competent people to work on projects. Because the Taskforce is not an entity, it’s a collaboration.

RICHARD FREER And that’s the process that they will be following.

GEORGE STEVENSON Correct. We can take a couple of questions.

VIKTORIA ROY George, amazing presentation, amazing solution…very impressed. If I may suggest and that will be answering probably Richard’s question from my side. There is a process called BCAR and there is an Assigned Certifier position as well. So whoever is assigned the building and is reviewing the certificate itself is probably responsible. But, as you rightly suggested, to reveal that amount of information is nearly impossible under the time pressure.

And what I have tired and it really worked, that pre-contractor appointment on the architectural side, if you can include a process where the fire escape route needs to be coordinated as a separate package. Like coordinating facade or roof, why won’t we coordinate the fire rout escape? Because it’s a very easy exercise, usually we understand within one meeting where the fife door is.We understand because not many would know that fire lintel is actually considerably larger and higher in comparison to. So lintels during design stage are not taken into consideration.

And then the fire dampers is changed though when the contractor gets appointed and then we all get distracted to fix the problem rather than actually. But if in your step you have the designer before submitting to the contractor have to coordinate in the 3D environment the fire escape route and identify the positions of the dampers, that’s pretty much the responsibility everybody who needs to take taken. From my perspective the problem here is that architect appointing the fire engineer way too late in the process. And this question is way too late when the contractor is already onboard doing their own things.

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely and just to reinforce that, what we’ve recognised as well that the role of the fire engineer, and it’s not just the fire engineer that can produce a fire strategy. Architects and also specialists in compartmentation can also do that. But it’s something that we’ve recognised and we’ve got a workstream that’s looked specifically at fire strategy plans. If anybody is interested in what Viktoria has just said there in terms of fire strategies and that side of things, please put ‘fire strategy plan’ in the chat. Because we’ve already had quite a big effort in that area and we can point you at that and also get your contribution.

DONATELLA FIORELLA I am a digital construction manager working for Skanska, a main contractor. I am working on the models. So now we’re implementing to all of our projects fire stopping tracking. Which means that we have them in the model, we track one by one throughout all of the stages like form validated, MEP services that go through. So we do have all of the tracking up to delivered and tested. So we do have the information with us, we know exactly where they are in terms of coordinating the rooms. So we have all of this information within the 3D model.

So for us to be understanding how the client wants this information and understanding the bridge between the 3D model and the client platform. If it is the O&M passport or it is the fire safety management platform. Then a solution for the items that are not in the model because we are looking to having mini pieces…just a mini square, a mini cube that would be representative in terms of spatial element within the model. So it is a stupid placeholder, but then we can attach to this one the information that you want.

So for example for us we are not meant to model sensors, but we will have a placeholder within the model. And then we will attach to this information coming from the subcontractor, so we will do that reverse operation. Now, from my side the difficulty is all about what the clients want and what information that they want and to do what. So I always miss that information the clarity, because if I know what I am looking for from Stage 3 I can put the requirements in place and I can put the process to delivery.

And just to finish, validation is always a headache from our side too because we don’t know what we need to validate against what. So we are working on automation as well. We are not there yet, so there is a lot of work to be done and this workshop is very fantastic for that.

CHRIS JEFFERS This actually goes back to the slides that George was presenting. I think this is exactly the right direction of travel and all of those different components that you’ve broken down there. And we’ve seen in previous presentations how well that should work together. It might be something that you don’t want to explore at this point George, but one of the areas in real interest is OK, we’ve got quite a comprehensive integrated system of different software and you talked about that federated model.

What happens when then if that’s in place as a process, if I’m an FM or a maintainer how do II interact and how do I effect change? So a wall comes down or a system comes out and it’s how that actually takes place from a very practical perspective.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think that’s a really good point Chris and part of the process is that we need to make sure that the information that is being collected, both on a new build but also for smaller projects, is actually in a machine-readable format. Now if it is in a machine-readable format and it’s complying with COBie which is the international standard for handover information, it means that it’s in a form that then can relatively easily be kept up to date in whatever system.

Now obviously, as Active Plan we’re providing a means of doing that, but we’re working around COBie. So therefore it means that any other software company, any other client organisation can use whatever they need. So I’d be happy to drill in to the detail of that with you.

RICHARD FREER Are you going to be showing Paul’s film?

GEORGE STEVENSON What I’m actually thinking is that with time I’ll explain what Paul’s thing is. This particular one, Paul wasn’t able to do it…what he did here, he went through and explained how he set up the rules with input from a whole range of different specialists. I don’t know how much you know about AI, but the very important thing is to make sure that the knowledge base has been setup. So if you’d like to know what the rules are for how we’ve set up what I’m now about to show you put ‘rules’ into the chat.

So the principle that we’re working on here is that it’s unlikely…what typically happens for FMs is that we’ll have a model which is probably the designer’s model. That designer’s model goes to the construction teams to build and they then add to it, they will also interpret information back from it. But that information seldom gets to the FM contractor fully from the model, from the COBie data. A lot of the information is in the form of documents and in this particular case there were 10,000 documents in the O&M manual.

And one of the big challenges is knowing whether the documents that you were expecting to be in that zip file are actually there. So what we’ve done is created a process that automatically checks, very quickly, the content of the zip file and identifies what’s missing. Now by doing that, this is at a file level, initially the first pass is to actually interrogate the dataset. And if there is a register or a schedule of documents that says that it’s providing these specific documents, it will check and it will tell us immediately whether those documents actually exist.

Now remember there’s 10,000 documents in this file, so therefore doing that is really quite important. What it also does is picks up any files that are not readable. And in this particular case, and this is a real job quite recent, there was two macro-enabled workbooks in there as well. That is a real no no because that’s how viruses are transferred, so that’s quite surprising. This is the result of the training that Paul showed where it’s actually gone through and audited each of the work 54 work packages and picked up what was missing.

So in this particular case this particular one needed testing and commissioning certificates. So this manual process, it took 25 days to actually go through all of these documents and then identify what was missing. So this is an expert going through and actually defining the quality. That then produced an output that identified what was missing by work package so that they know…in this particular case not one work package of the 54 actually passed the criteria that had been set out at the beginning.

But then what we’ve done is created prompts for automating that process. And this is really what we want to encourage people to start to use and if you want to be part of this initiative just put ‘AI checker’ in the chat. And what this process also does is it will go and generate the outputs that identify what’s missing. What we wanted to do was see if people were interested in that particular process, so I’ll hand back to you Richard and let’s see if there’s any discussions.

RICHARD FREER George has gone through the process. What’s everybody doing at the moment? Are you using Ai for any of your stuff? How are you checking your O&Ms at the moment?

CHRIS JEFFERS At the moment it’s manual. So I can say from a large engineering consultancy, all of the projects that were involved in, the majority of work we do is a manual check. In other words a human checking through percentages of packages that are handed over. And that is all of the things that we’ve spoken about on these calls, all of the issues and problems. But that’s what is still happening.

RICHARD FREER So are you interesting in learning more about this, Chris?

CHRIS JEFFERS Absolutely, we certainly are. And I’m happy to put my head above the parapet as a representative at Motts because there’s some people at Motts that say oh no, we should be doing it. Yeah but we’re not doing it, so it’s really important that we know about this.

CHANDAN SUTRADHAR What happened like Chris said is absolutely correct. One thing we heard about, there are many open source, but the concrete solution to read inside the …manual, the warranty period, the actual end date, installation dates. These kind of operational data that is core studies required, like opening individual documents and the data and then identify the asset register compared to that. So I believe there is no such AI tool inside things can be read and identify right now, but yes, the document naming and some extent Autodesk build. Like those something the documentation part can be possible, but reading the document and identifying and helping out summarise information, that is I believe not happening right now.

GEORGE STEVENSON You’re absolutely right Chandan that the technology now is with us to be able to do this. One of the challenges that we’ve got is making sure that that technology is properly governed. And the AI group that we’ve set up, which has now got over 100 people involved in it, they are coming forward with ways that they are experimenting with tools. And Tim’s going to be explaining how we’re coordinating that. And we very much want this to be a collaborative initiative because the knowledge is in the people, not in the technology.

GARETH GRIMES I just wanted to underpin the section around the O&Ms. Myself and George have had a conversation about this in person, but I just want to reiterate to everybody, out of those 54 failures there are 54 potential claims against the Defective Premises Act and the Building Safety Act. So you can already see that there is risk there. So anybody who is producing O&M manuals, if you’re not confident that it’s accurate you’re exposing yourself to a potential claim.

It wouldn’t take a very smart solicitor to create its own biosphere to start coming after contractors and subcontractors. So this is vital, this is something that I’m embracing and driving it for George and the team.

ANDREI IULIAN You asked if we were using AI. We are a software provider, but we are a few steps further into this process when it comes to what do you do once you start breaking down this information. George, we had a conversation about what happens when you analyse all of those documents and then you have a list from those documents, these are the things that I need to know, these are the information requirements. And we are working on using AI taking an Excel list and making them in to information delivery specifications that are then enforceable into your models.

GORDON PRINGLE Some of this stuff is already getting done, but reverting back to an earlier point about minimal compliance. Minimal compliance does not necessarily achieve best practice. So best practice sometimes in guidance will bring you some of these aspects, but it’s still not getting you past minimal compliance. So effectively there is solutions out there, there is stuff that’s being taken up.

And one of the previous comments from the main contractor group is leading a charge there, but it will all filter through, it’s just the uptake is not good. But I think manufacturers and adopters that have that need to make that open information so that everybody sees best practice and benefits of that process, because they don’t know what they don’t know.

PIERRE VENTER The processes, we’ve automated all sorts of things, but currently nobody is talking about the feedback loop to the people who are doing the design the engineering and documentation. And that’s one big chasm right now is that we’re getting to the end, we can put photogrammetry and we can do all those things, but they’re not improving their design delivery because it’s irrelevant, it’s outside of their scope.

PAV SINGH AI hallucinates, please contact Nick Nisbet, he’s looking at regulatory compliance. There’s constraints in actually trusting AI and it goes back to what the meeting was talking about at the start, we need that common language integrated in to contracts. if you don’t have it, the AI will get the wrong information and not be able to prove it in a law court or whatever. So you just need the left and right hand side working together.

GEORGE STEVENSON Pav, you’re bang on there. And one of the things that we’re trying to do within our group is make sure that we’ve got that level of expertise of people that know what the answer should be. So when you look at what Paul’s presentation from last month, the point is we’re not relying on the AI to come up with the answers. We‘ve produced the answers and then we’ve used the AI to recreate them. Now that means we’ve got a known outcome that we’re then automating the process of how to get there.

So we’re not saying that there’s a magic box here, it actually needs to be overseen. And we’re very much looking at this from a point of view of these are tools that need to be used by competent people. And we’ve got that feedback loop that Pierre was talking about as well, so that the rest of the team is not disconnected. So that’s why the Golden Thread Taskforce is a good mechanism to do that, but we need to firm that up a little bit more to make it something that’s a little bit more formal.

PAV SINGH Are you going to publish guidance documents that help clients and

other people make decisions? Because a lot of group work is happening, it’s just that

we don’t know what the output objective is and what we’re going to be giving to

clients. Because, you’re doing very valuable stuff.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s exactly what we’re doing.And if anybody wants the published documents then we’re almost there with providing that. The point is what we’re then doing is providing a means to audit the BIM models, or the asset data that’s coming from the BIM models I’ll just qualify that. We’re auditing the O&Ms and validating them and the next step of the process is to then check that what was promised to be installed has actually been installed. So those are the three steps.

Now what we want to do is make sure that people get it right from the first place so that we can use automation to actually ensure that the initial creator of the information, and in this particular case we’re talking the O&M information, can be done in a standardised way without risk of people getting it wrong. Tim, can you step in there?

TIM AIKIN Obviously we’re going back to the coalface here to get good information coming through the pipeline. So the question is how do subcontractors, those at the coalface, actually engineer good? So what I’m doing now is I’m using AI that can actually manipulate and do stuff on my file system and it can organise information and all sorts of things. What’s a specialist contractor got? They’ve got a whole series of different types of information. They’ve got all of these things that they do as part of the process to actually build the building.

They start off with a tender obviously, which has also got a scope of work and it says what specifications are. Then when they get the order they start ordering materials and they get quotations. If you’re changing specified products you’ve got to do a technical submittal or if there are certain things that it says in the specification you must submit for approval then you’ve got the technical submittals process to go through, you’ve got to make sure that you’re complying with codes. You write method statements and work procedures and you must also make sure you get all of your compliance certificates.

So they’re doing all of this stuff anyway and it must be living somewhere. So information that we then need to make sure goes in to the O&M and the dataset, it comes from all of this. So you need a process where you can get this information done. Now that’s all done manually at the moment. So the AI enables us to manipulate the desktop and start running multiple agents that have certain tasks to do.

And the hierarchy of the agents can be an agent can orchestrate what the other agents do as well. This might seem a bit sort of scary, but in fact what it’s doing is saying oh right, you’ve got a schedule here or a quotation of these products but you haven’t got the product data, I’ll go and get it.

So it goes and looks and says right, you’re getting it from this company, it’s this model number etc, off I’ll go and get it. There’s an installation manual, there’s an operations manual, I’ll download that data as well. And then they can also write things like Word and Excel files. So they can say right, you’ve got a tender document, I’ll create a scope of works of what you’ve done which also includes whereabouts in the building that you’re actually doing your work. And these agents can also connect to external services.

An external service might be something like our PIM which is basically saying well, the consultants have done all of this, this is how the floors are named, this is how the spaces are named, here are how the types are named for the products etc. So when it comes to actually use that it says I must go and check that I’m not using different terminology or different naming conventions than everybody else. But it does it automatically, the agent takes care of that. Because we’ve seen so many times where you get complete disjunction.

So what should be the outcomes of this? First of all it organises the folder structure and says I’m going to create these folders to store this information in, so you as a human being can actually see what’s actually being done. Now, we know this works because we did this on the UCL project where we deconstructed a health & safety file and got it to actually create a folder structure. And so what we expect to see is that we’ve now got an organised repository of the information. And that is enough to be able to create a good O&M dataset and also the other dataset which is a COBie deliverable.

GEORGE STEVENSON Could I just make a point. Tim has just referred there to a university scheme that we’ve helped with. And one of the key things with that, Tim identified that there was a building control approval document in the health & safety file, in the O&M, but it was for a different building. So the point was whoever did that checking, tick in the box that there’s a building control approval document, but they didn’t actually look at it to identify that it’s for a different building.

TIM AIKIN In our company, everybody is using my house as the experiment. i have a project which is my house, so that has been built using COBie and is inside our PIM. And then I have Home Assistant which is an automation system. We’ve now got an MPC server working on our PIM and Home Assistant has got MPC servers as well, MPC stands for Model Context Protocol, but effectively it has what’s called a set of tools. And the set of tools are if you want to get information about such and such, when you talk to the AI.

If I said to the AI how many rooms are there in my house. If I ask that, while it’s thinking about that what I’ve got up in the right hand one is I’ve been experimenting with getting some information and then I’ll say oh, just send an email to a colleague. So it just constructs an email and sends it to a colleague. So it’s just asking for some permissions to do things. There we have it, I’ve got 15 rooms apparently. And once you start doing that, say OK, can you give me the areas? It should bring back net and gross areas because that’s the sort of standard thing that you have against space.

But the interesting thing was then mapping the devices in Home Assistant, like the oven. We’ve got a split smart oven and it’s telling me what the current status is. So I asked it to pull the details up and then tell me what the status is and then send an email to my wife. But it just shows you the sort of thing, how easy it is at the end of the process, you can start to say lots of different things. And one of the things that we’re going to be developing is in this right hand window you can display PDFs spreadsheets, HTML and SVG.

And so we’re going to say right OK, show me where it is, give me a plan of where it is. And then constructing the email and also take a snapshot in the 360 photograph of here it is as well. So rather than send somebody a 360 photograph you just take the flat on one because the 360 photograph will know how to get that object centred and then take a snapshot of it. So include in the email this is everything about the status of that oven and here is a picture of where it is in the kitchen.

GORDON PRINGLE One question, we often ask MEP subcontractors what’s the water volume of your closed seal systems. And they have no idea, they guess, they try and use the rule of thumb. I say to them how much pipework did you order. Aha, we’ve got that, we know what we ordered we paid the invoices. How much have you got left? What do you mean? How much have you put in the scrapheap, just count the meterage of pipe that you’ve maybe got left.

Hopefully you’ve got none left and if you’ve not use AI to generate the internal water volume of that equipment and use AI to determine the water volume of all of your dry weight and wet weight of all of your devices. Bob’s your uncle, you’ve got your water volume of your system. Or put a water meter on it and fill it. But they can’t put a water meter on and fill it because they’ll have that many leaks in the system because they use water to test the leaks.

But look at the internal volume, use AI. Sometimes it’s as simple as that, spelling out basics. But they don’t do it because either they can’t be bothered or they’ve actually never been asked before.

FRANCO PITTONI Just a tiny observation about common language. I noticed that the gross area and the net area values are the same, so there is a misunderstanding.

TIM AIKIN Yes, in fact they actually are the same. When you’re working out the net areas, the gross area is to the perimeter and the net area will be taking away things like columns and obstructions and things like that. Just going back to what you said, Gordon, is that I don’t have location of the hot water tank in my PIM but do have the hot water tank in the Home Assistant.

And when I asked it about the hot water system it was looking at the PIM, so I just told it to look at that. So it just gave me back the information about the combi boiler. But now it’s telling me the hot water status and everything. But on Home Assistant, it doesn’t actually know the equipment and how big a tank it is, but it can give be the status.

GEORGE STEVENSON What we really want to be able to do is to talk to people who are doing this validation process of the information, in particular the information at handover. In my experience, the people that would be doing that within the construction companies would be the quality team. So if you know people who are quality managers in Tier 1 construction teams, could you put ‘quality’ into the chat, just in case we can then talk to you about who those people are.

Exactly the same, if you know of people who are performing the role of consultants, maybe as employer’s agents or something of that nature, if you could put ‘agents’ into the chat then we’ll come back to you. Because what we really want to do, we’re not trying to catch people out, we’re trying to automate this process so that we upskill the industry. Because people are putting a lot of effort into producing a lot of this information, but the problem is because it’s not connected up it’s of much less value.

Whereas if we can automate the process we can concentrate the people’s experience on the things that really do need doing, that we can’t rely on the AI to do.

TIM AIKIN Can I just add a point in there is that when the information isn’t connected up the confidence drops through the floor. And people then put more and more effort having to work around those inconsistencies. And we saw this on that project that we did where there was in the COBie data no references to any of the MEP equipment, so the fan cool units, the fire dampers.

None of those codes where in the COBie data, none of the door numbers were in the COBie data and the excuse that came back was that well, that’s a client defined thing. No it’s not. But it made you think you haven’t actually done it, you’ve just been paid X thousands of pounds, so what did you do?

PIERRE VENTER Standardise, standardise, standardise, there’s the whole thing. All of those processes, input and output documents, they need to be standardised. Not the parameter name, but the purpose and intent of that parameter. And what this does Tim, it says what you’re going to get is the following, it will be 5 columns, bang. And that way we get a far more cohesive consistent and so the confidence will rise because everybody sees the same series of columns.

They can package it anyway they like, but that’s what you’re going to get it those 5 columns. And that standardisation is absolutely crucial, in my experience, from being in the Middle East on global projects when you’ve got a big team, it just kills the time.

ANDREA TAYLOR I think having recently changed roles, George knew me from Warrington Fire and I’m now at the Fire Door Association. And the reason that we’re setting up this association is because the industry is so fragmented and all of these conversations, there’s so many good things being spoken about. And since this new role I’ve spoken to people who are using AI to inspect doors, there’s so much out there, but I think it’s just trying to pull everything together.

And for anyone not familiar with us, we are soon to launch, the point of the association is to pull everyone together who touches a fire door, so from architect to resident. Whereas I think at the minute associations tend to focus on specific people, Tier 1 contractors or manufacturers. So I’ve put my name down for a lot of task groups, whatever you need us to support with we’ll help to try and pull all of this together. And as an example, I try to explain this a bit like when you look for your car insurance before Compare the Market came along, we’re here to try and pull everyone in the supply chain.

GEORGE STEVENSON Given the fact that Andrea has just mentioned fire doors, this is one of the things that I’m showing here. The COBie data here, this is what Tim was just talking about, you’ve got a space reference there. Now that space reference should be sacrosanct, but it also should be up to date. And if it’s the design model that that’s been generated from, it may well not be the current reference. What we’ve got here down the bottom, this is a fire door schedule.

So the references for the spaces are slightly different. Now, they may think that they’ve done something helpful there by putting WC core in the description, but actually it means that it’s no longer machine-readable. I understand that we can overcome that by using all sorts of different tools to do that, but why? Why don’t we use the same references? And the other thing as Tim was saying, in the AIR it actually said that you’ve got to put tag numbers in, which is the unique ID for each of those doors, and they’re all missing.

So in the whole COBie for that we’ve got no locations for anything.

ANDREA TAYLOR I think it was Pierre who mentioned the standardisation, that’s something that we’re very passionate about doing. I’v worked at BSI, I’ve worked at lots of different places, and I know that during the Golden Thread Taskforce that we’re part of sometimes you’ve got to look outside of the industry that you’re in to see that other industries are doing really good things. I’ve come from all sorts of industries including medical devices and fire door labelling blows my mind at the minute, the amount of different things that I see.

But I actually visited a test lab the other day who were doing a third-party certification on their label. It’s very clear it has a QR code on that takes you to the evidence. There’s lots of good things being done in the industry and I just wanted to come to a comment that I think was made by Matt in the chat. One thing the Fire Door Association isn’t going to do, we’re not here to reinvent the wheel, there are lots of associations out there and we are here to pull all of that information together. So we will signpost to things that people are doing that are already associations.

So it’s pulling everyone together in a collaborative family, we’re not here to start something new. It’s about pulling everything in to one place, so no matter whether you’re a landlord or a housing association or a contractor, it doesn’t matter, there will be space for you there that you can find everything in one place. Because having not come from fire doors and looked at many a website trying to build this association, I can’t understand it. So if I can’t understand it I understand that some of the people on this call won’t be able to understand it.

GEORGE STEVENSON Just to reinforce that, this was the next slide in this. In this particular project, in the BIM model in the COBie data there were 20 different fire door types. In the actual door schedules there was over 100. And that’s because the fabricator or the supplier quite correctly created different types for different types of iron mongery, for example. In this particular case there were 7 different variants based on that one that was in there, how do you match it up? You don’t because it’s just not been done.

Also the referencing on this particular case the drawings, you’ll see on there you’ve got a drawing where the naming was for D0o1 for the first floor. So all of the doors are o1s except that one which is o2 which actually means that it’s supposed to be on the second floor. But that same door is also on the fourth floor and on the fifth floor. Now we probably know what’s happened there, somebody has just copied up and manually edited the drawings, but it’s a common problem. So that’s what we need to be addressing. But it may be that the compliance people that are advising the clients say well, you’ve got a drawing and it’s got some numbers on it, what’s wrong?

You’ve got door schedules, you’ve got numbers in them, the fact that they don’t join up, what’s the issue? It's compliant. That’s what we as a group have got to push back and say the information has to be fit for purpose.

PIERRE VENTER One of the big problems right throughout everything that you’ve said now is about ownership. In this drafting level of documentation is if you know how Revit works, the owner, the person who put in the door component is the person who owns that door. And whoever is then manager or whatever it’s a ground work thing. They go along and say check that the details have been done. and that’s at the lowest level, that isn’t automation, that’s just people doing their job properly. And it also raises the level of their awareness.

Now right now my concern about the automation is that it removes the need for people to be conscientious, critical, dedicated. And that’s a big failing in our industry right now is that we’re saying automate, automate to fill the gaps and that’s a big problem right now.

GEORGE STEVENSON I don’t disagree with you but the fact is this is the quality of information that regularly, and probably almost invariably, is handed over. We both know that it’s wrong, but what are we actually going to do about it? One way of doing something about it is to be able to identify it. Because at the moment people are receiving O&Ms and health & safety files and they just don’t have the time and the expertise to actually audit them.

So a first step is to be able to do that and enable that. And I think that that’s why the work that Tim and the team are doing in the data engineering and AI group can make a difference.

PIERRE VENTER Absolutely, but it does need to have that feedback loop so that it’s improving the workers. Because I’m seeing guys that actually to them, Revit, BIM, whatever it is, is a nice glossy way of doing something quickly because I can cut and paste etc and actually have no idea about what I’m actually doing. So there’s a problem with apprenticeships and level of skills etc.

CHAT

Ian Upton……So would there be opportunity for transference ?

Paul Toner….Will NBS sells NBS Chorus, it wouldn't be a surprise that they start charging for uniclass if other nations are for other classifications

Ian Upton….REFER back to ISO19650 ALways

Hallam, Jonathan….is Omniclass just used in the states?

Phil Thompson…According to ISO 19650-1, an asset is defined as an "item, thing or entity that has potential or actual value to an organization". This includes both physical entities—such as buildings, infrastructure, land, and components—and digital assets (models, documentation) managed throughout their lifecycle

Hallam, Jonathan….Functional & Spatial breakdown in ISO19650 allow clients to use their own asset hierarchy

Bryn Mainwaring….ISO 19650-2 has the normative reference to ISO 12006-2, which is the standard for Uniclass. ISO 19650-2:2018 clause 3.2.8 "asset" item, thing or entity that has potential or actual value to an organization. [SOURCE: ISO 55000:2014, 3.2.1, modified — Note 1, 2 and 3 to entry have been removed.]

Ian Upton….My question is - does product - Equipment ? if So - an asset

Matthew Cunliffe….I always found it difficult with Housing Associations where they called the Asset the building, but my background on MEP is effectively anything down to components/elements that are maintainable. But yes end of the day, its what the client determines of value?!

Ian Upton…Product can = entity so in that respect I would say yes

Phil Thompson…A product only has potential once it is installed

Ian Upton…We call them maintainable Asset in Gov Mathew

Ian Upton….Similar with "Data" phil but still would classify Data as an Asset in my view

Bryn Mainwaring….The asset, if a building (at handover), contains more than products.

Lawrence Chapman….Its really straight forward process to add new entities to Uniclass. I had experience of adding Rail Components to uniclass.

Hallam, Jonathan….I would say inside of a asset (building, infra piece) needs to be consistent where was before DIO was moving from NRM to uniclass as uniclass was more widespread/ less gapsproducts/ equipment, things that can easily be moved is different type of assetIts more asset levels from building down to light switch

Ian Upton…Geospatial packages are being developed

Ian Upton….Terms of Reference are very important - WHAT/WHO/WHEN

Piotr Bytnar….No its not savvy but a typical occurrence, currently going through the same and the contractor designers are surprised that we are actually asking questions. We are supervisors under NEC.

Andrew Perry….Checking Fire Stopping Dwgs - needs boots on the ground to survey the installation during construction phase before the ceilings are installed ! Needs recognition and appreciation of the value of doing this in the long term and not just a cost. Can also then assess access for testing of FD to maintain the Thread

Paul Toner….Exactly this Ian, every client has different asset requirements, based on their own use cases.On most projects it most of the MEP services, Architecturally - Roller Shutters, Fire Doors, Fall Arrest Systems, anything that needs to be maintainable, in relation to a health and safety aspect

Lawrence Chapman….How can we learn more about Shanghai?

Andrew Perry…On a Healthcare project that had been in operation for 18 yrs - we found that approx. 50% of the 4000 SD / FD could not be accessed- even though the FM Co had provided "evidence" that they had been tested

Ian Upton….Ive seen new build units in hospitals that have intumecent strips hanging off new fire doors and Alarm Wiring wrapped around power cables on temporary buildings - its horrific.

Dash, Dexter (UDX)…. what makes SHang hi so far ahead - Ai, apps, methodologies, work flows, people power?

Pierre Venter….Hallam, Jonathan  The Spatial Volumes  and connected into the checklist/tidp

Barry Bassnett….This is all brilliant. We also need a marketing comms strategy to educate the market. At the moment this is all internal to this group. which is a great start, and c levels  of course.

Hallam, Jonathan….they are but most time just use ZZ, all standard files we see all the time should specify Level of Location needed

Ian Upton….The mapping of this with AI is very simple - AS I always say its the DATA that is important here.

Pierre Venter….Hallam, Jonathan   The spatial volumes + the room/space identification, is there.  a Stacking diagram is a great tool visually with that data

Antreas Neofytou….I’m curious , for those of you using Uniclass, how do you handle unique system or product type identification? Uniclass gives you the classification, but when it comes to distinguishing between individual System or Product types , there doesn’t seem to be a clear framework for that. I’d be interested to know how different practices approach it. On a related note, I’ve also noticed that a lot of companies in the UK are still using the CI/SfB system for architecture packages and drawing numbering. It’s been around for decades and clearly worked well in its time, but it’s not actively maintained anymore. Are people still relying on it, or have you moved to something else?

Ian Upton….MAH or Codifcations

Lawrence Chapman…don't we federate this information together using the Information Delivery Packaging concept set out in 19650?

Ian Upton…Or a combination of Both…Taxonomy can be developed into EAM /CMMS/CAFMs Im curious - How Many people have CDE's or use Common data Environments to reference documentation from their CMMS/CAFM/CAD/EAM

Matthew Cunliffe…Dealing with existing estates owners, huge majority just have their documents on cloud based systems! Easier to have on Sharepoint then meta data lots of documents up and then be worried about having them controlled by a software vendor

Ian Upton….Also legal compliane in some circumstances

Matthew Cunliffe…I personally think if they can keep there docs in a place they own/manage more directly but link to a CDE they would feel a lot more confident about deploying a CDE

Lawrence Chapman…Agree George, the Competencies of a SQPE is not clearly defined anywhere. i have therefore been working on a Information Management Competency Framework

Joseph Lloyd…For defined “skills and knowledge” for some, working activities are within the “occupational standards” e.g. installation of fire dampers BSEFSD01.

Antreas Neofytou….Since we were just talking about how AI isn't fully utilised yet, I think one of the reasons is because we don't have a clear way to define it- safety, governance, how it fits into BEPs and standards. With that in mind, I've been working on a classification system that runs parallel to Uniclass and ISO19650, specifically designed for AI-driven classification. It's still in development, but if anyone is interested or has any thoughts, here it is: https://github.com/AntreasNeofytou65/AIClass

Matthew Cunliffe…Walking around at London Proptech yesterday, still shocked at the lack of awareness of COBie as a interoperable data schema. Especially with some platforms in E/AMS that should be absorbing and exporting it!!!

Peter Monaghan….Our O&M Manual has a TIDP mapped to the Asset and System register. The O&M documents are delivered through the CDE and we auto check the deliverables against the TIDP using Excel

Matthew Cunliffe…I don't think we are near a position to discuss good AI decision making in O&M until we have used AI or humans to make the data good for it to make a decision with!!!.. My new favourite term, "AI Workslop"

Ian Upton…The issue with this is What is the end requirement for the organisations and how to work back to bringing the relevant data into systems that help them make value desicions.

Phil Thompson…Another reference to a product, not an asset

Phil Thompson….

Pav Singh….Please note that the information is also critical as preconstruction information under CDM where there is a duty to provide information for O&M.

Marsackey….Hi. Tim.  Absolutely.   The supply chain expect the client to pick up the assurance management which is their role to do throughout the project.
Clients are not fully aware of this.

Matt Bluh….Is fire industry not fragmented because every 6 months someone starts a new association rather than driving change in the existing associations....

Joseph Kozelka…door types should not change for different ironmongery type that should be indentified by a paramenter called ironmongry set

Andrea Taylor…Here's the link to our industry consultation survey for anyone who wants to give their opinion: https://lnkd.in/eFuyMQfr

SUMMARY

1. Meeting Overview

This session focused on advancing the Golden Thread from compliance to practical implementation and business value, with emphasis on retrospective application, classification challenges, digital handover, and AI-enabled validation. The discussion brought together cross-industry stakeholders to define ‘what good looks like’ and establish structured, auditable processes for asset information management.

2. Strategic Context

- Increasing regulatory pressure (Building Safety Act, Gateway regime, Regulation 38 obligations).
- Industry reliance on fragmented, manual processes for information validation.
- Emerging risks from poor O&M quality and incomplete asset data.
- Growing need to demonstrate both compliance and operational assurance.
- Market disruption risks (e.g. monetisation of classification systems).
- Shift toward positioning the Golden Thread as a business value driver rather than compliance burden.

3. Key Messages

- Minimum compliance is insufficient and leads to unusable information and increased risk.
- Classification is foundational but must remain open, consistent, and widely adoptable.
- The Golden Thread should be defined as connected, auditable, machine-readable information across lifecycle.
- Current handover practices fail due to lack of validation and integration.
- AI and automation are essential to scale validation and improve data quality.
- Information must be defined early (design stage) and aligned with client operational needs.
- Resource planning is critical—processes without resourcing will fail.

4. Key Insights (Thematic)

4.1 Information Quality, Standardisation & Auditability
Fragmented O&M documentation, inconsistent classification, and lack of validation result in low confidence data. Standardised, machine-readable structures are essential for auditability and compliance.

4.2 Cost and Risk Reduction Across Lifecycle
Poor information quality creates significant legal exposure (e.g. Defective Premises Act claims) and increases operational inefficiencies. Early-stage data quality reduces long-term costs and handback risks.

4.3 Supply Chain Accountability
Automated validation highlights gaps in contractor deliverables, driving improved quality and accountability across supply chains.

4.4 Digital Handover & Federation
Value is realised when BIM, COBie, O&M, and 360 imagery are federated into a single, usable dataset rather than remaining siloed.

4.5 AI and Automation
AI enables rapid validation of large datasets (e.g. 10,000+ documents), but must be governed by expert-defined rules and structured data to ensure reliability.

4.6 Classification and Common Language
A shared classification system underpins interoperability; fragmentation or monetisation risks undermining industry-wide adoption.

4.7 Organisational & Cultural Challenges
Lack of C-suite awareness, unclear definitions (e.g. ‘as-built’), and insufficient resourcing are major barriers to implementation.

5. Key Insights (Board-Level)

- Structured information reduces regulatory, legal, and reputational risk.
- Digital asset data improves operational efficiency and maintenance planning.
- Verified asset data can reduce insurance premiums and increase asset value.
- Automation reduces cost of compliance and improves scalability.
- Failure to act exposes organisations to claims and enforcement action.

6. Action Points

- Define and standardise ‘as-built’ information requirements.
- Develop auditable task frameworks for Golden Thread delivery.
- Expand AI validation tools and ‘AI checker’ initiatives.
- Establish feedback loops from operations back to design teams.
- Improve classification alignment across projects and organisations.
- Engage C-suite through simplified, value-driven messaging.
- Identify and allocate appropriate resources for information management.
- Expand sector-specific workstreams (healthcare, residential, education).
- Promote machine-readable, federated data environments.
- Engage quality managers and employer’s agents in validation processes.

7. Risks & Implications

- Continued reliance on minimum compliance will lead to unusable data and increased liability.
- Poor O&M validation creates exposure to legal claims and safety risks.
- Fragmented classification systems could undermine interoperability.
- Over-reliance on AI without governance risks inaccurate outputs.
- Lack of resourcing will prevent effective Golden Thread implementation.

8. Next Steps

- Circulate white paper and guidance for peer review.
- Convene working groups on tasks, as-built definition, and AI validation.
- Identify pilot projects for federated data and automated validation.
- Engage industry stakeholders (clients, contractors, regulators).
- Develop standardised templates and information delivery frameworks.

9. Conclusion

The forum highlights a critical transition from compliance-driven information management to a structured, value-driven Golden Thread approach. Achieving this requires standardisation, automation, and cross-industry collaboration, supported by strong governance and executive engagement.