BIMinAM OPERATIONS WORKING GROUP MEETING 04-06-2025
BEX GIBSON In terms of agenda, you should have received the agenda within the meeting invite, so we’ll just go through that. The first one is the Golden Thread working group update. I’ve not actually been to the Golden Thread working group yet, but I know there is one in a couple of weeks.
RICHARD FREER It’s a bit complex because we’ve got the Golden Thread Working Group which has kind of spun off the Golden Thread Taskforce. So, the main update is on the Golden Thread Taskforce. The last Golden Thread Working Group was primarily on the Taskforce which is a group of people which we’re still recruiting for. The idea being that these are people who are expert who have already achieved the level of knowledge, or at least awareness, of what needs to be done to satisfy the Golden Thread at all stages, from start to finish.
I haven’t got a presentation of that, George always does this but unfortunately be couldn’t make it. We’ve got the first proper meeting for that on the 12th of June. The idea is that it’s about, we’re launching a badge with that called Golden Thread Awareness. To kind of make sure that the knowledge and the awareness of what’s going on is disseminated. It's getting it out, a lot of the people who come to our meetings, they know. Not all of them, and a lot of people are very new but they know where we’re coming from. Otherwise they wouldn’t be at our meetings, to some extent.
But it’s about how to get it out to the supply chain of operations that you’re working with and to get it disseminated throughout your business, and the best way of doing that. We touched on that, Bex, yesterday in the advisory meeting. The advisory group was always a bit of a misnomer because people never quite understood what it was. It was advisors, but what does that mean? So we’ve renamed it the advisory and consultancy group, because it’s about basically consultants. It can be internal people who are advising, but generally speaking they’re external.
And the best way of those external people, I don’t call them outsourcing, I call them resourcing. Those external resources, how best they can manage the process on what the process should be, in terms of educating their clients as to what should be done, why it should be done and how we ensure that the consultants are also doing the right thing. So, that’s what we’re working on, we’re at the early stages, we’ve identified various elements that need to be looked at. And the next meeting we will be chopping that down to make it bitesized chunks.
So, that’s a very rough overview of where we’ve got to in those things. It's rough because they’re new and we’re in process. They’re happening already, but we’re not at a stage to say right, we’ve done this, because we haven’t yet. But if you’re interested in the Taskforce put ‘Taskforce’ in the chat and we’ll get you included.
BEX GIBSON And in terms of the group itself, how is the split between all of the different groups that it’s coming from? Because obviously there’s lots of different, you’ve got your ops group and you’ve got your ? 4mins 34secs group, is it fairly well split? Or is it quite specific people who want it more?
RICHARD FREER No, I think you brought up yesterday about post-handover, that’s also important. And we were talking about consultants need to get engaged earlier on, and everybody agrees on that, it just doesn’t happen for a number of reasons. And that’s about education because there is a risk in employing consultants early and then the project doesn’t go ahead. But compared with the risk of getting stuff wrong, and then suddenly you bring a consultant to sort it out right, that’s a balancing act. But I think most people would agree, or certainly most consultants would agree, it’s better to get in early.
Likewise, there’s a lot of talk that the maintenance side of things should be included right from the start. Because at the end of the day, that’s what everybody is aiming towards, a building that is effective, efficient and safe. Well, who’s going to be running that operation? It\s going to the operations group, the people who are actually organising and maintaining the property and running the property. So, it makes sense to have their expertise early on. So, it’s run the gamut. So I would say yes, it is everybody.
This is an BIMinAM initiative rather than a BIM4Housing initiative. BIMinAM is not just industry, it’s not just housing, it’s also asset management which is obviously at the end game is going to be the asset managers and the maintenance people, the ops people.
BEX GIBSON Yeah, and like you said the Golden Thread goes across the whole lifecycle. So, you’ve got your Gateways before construction, but most importantly is the 30 years of operation that you need to bring that information through to. So yeah, it’s really important to have the people who are operating the buildings to know what they’re asking for, otherwise it’s not going to work as well.
RICHARD FREER Absolutely, you know from the early BIM4housing days what we’re about is breaking down these silos. It’s about communication, it all comes down to a large extent, it’s about communication. How we communicate, standardising things, what that is all about is to ease communication, isn’t it? It’s about the communication, whether it’s human communication or technological communication.
BEX GIBSON Does anyone else have anything that they’d like to talk about in terms of the Golden Thread side of things?
RICHARD FREER So, what do you think Dumitru? As you said earlier, you’ve not been around for a few months. Where do you think we’re going in terms of the Golden Thread and your understanding? What’s your role, what company?
DUMITRU MINCIU I have my own company here in Bucharest, Romania. We do project management consultancy for construction projects including BIM consultancy. We are quite behind with our legislation in terms of what has developed in the Uk following the fire at Grenfell Tower. So, I am interested a little bit on that matter. We have a new law on fire protection here, last month. So, I don’t know so much of the Golden Thread, but I think there are measures to prevent fires like Grenfell.
RICHARD FREER Absolutely, you can get ahead of the legislation.
DUMITRU MINCIU Yes, we want to do that, basically I am specialised in COBie, I’m a COBie technical manager, I did my training at the University of Florida and I am preparing an article for COBie based on this new legislation that’s entered last month.
LAETITIA MARIE I’m information manager, document control manager for Bouygues UK. I have been working with BIM information management and tried to understand what will be requested from us. It’s a bit early, we need to unfortunately for us to fail, we need to go through all of this Gateway and over this project. We are still not really 100% sure of what has been requested of us. We went to the Gateway, we have been submitting information and we’ve been rejected with too many information submitted. We resubmitted, we’ve been successful for years, But if we made a checklist, if we had now full visibility of how we want to manage all of the information, we are still a work in progress. And I think we will need to at least do one or two projects to feel confident with this Golden Thread.
We don’t know how this will be working when we will be ? 11 mins 36 secs on our project. We did the Gateway 1 like most of the people have done that, we are working in the ISO 19650. We’ve been including it into one single source of information, but what we are speaking about is making sure that all of the information is still updated in time, for that we are not just blocking Gateway 1, We have kind of like a magic pot when it’s a generic submission, when we just update our information time to time.
But again, too much information…there is a lot of people which are thinking and which want to make it better. We are working more in the BIM environment, we have the asset in term of BIM, that it’s like making sure finding one way to work the best possible, knowing that we don’t have one software that can do everything at the same time.
BEX GIBSON Yeah, that’s a good point. That’s kind of what we’re trying to achieve with all of this is that standardised understanding, standardised approach. Working together across the industry to simplify it, but not simplify if you see what I am saying. Making sure that we all know what we’re doing and what we need to do and we’re doing it in a sensible way.
LAETITIA MARIE Again, I think we will need to fail, we will need to understand what is expected from us. I think a little bit more visibility from the other side because there is a lot of work from contractor and from a path to try to answer the question that has not been very clear in the other parts to tell us exactly what is expected from us. That I think we will have a little bit more visibility and clarity over the next 6 months. But I think we will need to go through and try to have a better understanding of what is expected. The client side, very stressed about that.
The client wants as-built information, still don’t understand this RIBA stage system that doesn’t really know what is expected from us. I think they are very, very stressed on the other hand, to add more and more specialists, to check and review the information, That we need to try to explain to them what is going on, trying to give them a little bit more clarity on this visibility, even if for us we are still a little bit in the dark. And yeah, I’m joining to try to see what you’re putting together and to try if I can have some insight and to bring you my understanding of the system. I am from France Paris, and I’m working in the international company.
RICHARD FREER Right, to you and Dumitru, we are in the process of setting up an international group which I think you will find very interesting. Not instead of this but in addition, that could be quite useful for you because it’s targeted at people outside the UK.
LAETITIA MARIE Just to be clear, I am working for Bouygues in the UK, my company is in the Uk and all of my projects are UK projects.
BEX GIBSON And in terms of your clients, you mentioned just now that they’re stressed about what is required and all of that. How are you managing that? And what is your view on how the clients are managing it? Because obviously this is the ops group, so we kind of want to have that view from your side of things as well, on how people who operate the building are currently doing it.
LAETITIA MARIE I kind of have a feeling, but this is just my feeling, that we have a slowdown in the business in construction. Some projects were supposed to start this year, last year, and they’ve just decided to wait a little bit, making sure that their system is updated. We have a lot of explanation to do, because everything is coming at the same time that we’re speaking about the Golden Thread of information. About the BSA and all of the different Gateway, we’re speaking ISO 19650 which has been added to it. That we have people who are working in the early BS1192. You need to explain the RIBA stage, to explain the different suitability code, you need to explain that there is no such thing as as-built information anymore.
So there is a lot of explaining to do, a lot of communication about what will happen, workflow validation, how we ere managing information. Speaking about one single source of information, what kind of EDMS you would like to use. How we can make it work, because as contractor we can just strongly recommend one software to be used. But some clients have their own software that we’re speaking about A-site, Viewpoint for project and other. We have also in term of BIM how we are managing of TIDP, this is very difficult for us also because clients now have full visibility of the TIDP. We are speaking about a Golden Thread of information, we need to make sure that the consultant, but everybody is onboard and knows what will be submitted.
This needs to be updated in the TIDP, and this TIDP needs to be managed a little bit more, like outside of the Excel fashion way that we have different software, I don’t know what you are using. We try with Mortar, we use different software which is allowing us also to manage this new online version of the MIDTP/TIDP and more difficult for our design subcontractor. And I think everybody in the UK will be Ok to say we can make the best standardised versions of this way of working, but we need also to know who can work with us.
BEX GIBSON And you said about software. So, from your side of things obviously you use software bringing it from the development side all of the way through to handover. Does the clients you work with have any requirements? Do you sell them the software? What happens to that at that crossover point to operations?
LAETITIA MARIE I think it’s the same for everybody when you are bidding, you are proposing the different software that you can use. We have a favourite one obviously. If the client is bringing his software as a must go, we have no choice but to work on it. That we add some of the software like an ETMS for example, we have seen that A-site sometime is a favourite one. In term of BIM we will try to have something to explain from the very early stage. We had multiple project when we tried to put it at the very early stage, making sure that all the asset is put in one place, PTS’s are speaking to each other.
Yeah, we’ve been working with different companies and we’re trying to standardise the same way as you. It’s difficult to say, but having the A list of the constructor, subcontractor and partner we can work with and we feel totally secure that they understand what is expected from them. I think it it’s like the must today, I suppose. I don’t know how you are doing, guys? What is the visibility for you for this Golden Thread of information. As you were saying, we were speaking about standardising and having a checklist. Is it something that you’ve put in place?
BEX GIBSON I don’t believe that we’ve put in place something solid like that, but I think the overarching idea is to increase that understanding and get to that point. Have you shown interest in going to that Golden Thread Taskforce? Because I think it might be really useful. I think it would cover quite a lot of the things that you’re working on as well. So, if you fancy joining that just put ‘Taskforce’ in the chat.
LAETITIA MARIE Yeah, I think I am already on it.
DAVE WILLIAMS Just on that checklist point, we have a Regulation 38 checklist which we use for new developments, specifically for those Regulation 38 requirements and we go through that. The thing is when it comes to components, while we were talking there I thought I’ll just do a quick count. I can share my screen. This is our data dictionary that we use for our asset management system. At Origin, PFP we are now, we’ve built an asset management system from scratch in Dynamics 365. So we had to go and have a look at all of the components that needed to be in there.
Whether they were components that were derived from stock condition surveys, or ones to do with compliance. Or just general components, things like aerials and satellite dishes and gardens etc. And you can see from here, I think we’ve got basically 342 components that we need to get information on when a new development comes across to us. And obviously that’s 342 named components, but there are multiple instances of those. So, you can imagine over an entire building how many bits of information that we need.
Because obviously if you’ve got communal windows there could well be 50-60 communal windows of which you’ve got to make a note of the make, model, size, all of these different parameters that you want to capture within those things. And even looking at fire safety, if I go into fire safety here, there’s 34 components there. Of which once again you might have multiple instances of these. When it comes to external structure, just the base level information, there’s 31 external structure things, 22 electrical things. Not to mention then that we’ve got doors.
And there are things, obviously, that aren’t that specific to safety, but they are to things like stock condition surveys where we have asset management lifecycles as to when we would replace a bathroom or a kitchen or something like that.
DUMITRU MINCIU Basically these are part of the pick list in COBie, right?
DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, basically should we actually get completed COBie information we would expect to have the information on these components in the COBie.
DUMITRU MINCIU You extracted this from the Uniclass tables that are part of COBie.
DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, interestingly we expect where possible to get the Uniclass identifiers. But the thing is as practitioners, so people that work in compliance, asset management, in planned maintenance, repairs, they tend to use the naming convention that they’re used to using. So, we have done sort of translations between what would be in IFC as far as what they’re called, the names of them, and compare them to more parochial names that we would use in the field.
So basically they all exist in the standards, but not necessarily in the same format, if you like, or the same name. There are always slight differences. But I thought it would be work just sharing the fact that that’s the level and amount of information that we’re trying to collect on every new development.
BEX GIBSON My question to that for Dumitru and Laetitia is, is that the kind of detail that you usually see in clients? Or is that far beyond? Or actually is it not as much as you usually see?
DUMITRU MINCIU We didn’t go so far to create data dictionaries. But we do classify items in what we would deliver as COBie, so far on this market we are right at the beginning. We did a project, but the aim is to have something like this, to have data dictionaries, basically classifications and attributes for clients. And also to charge clients if they don’t have something like this, and 99.9% don’t have something like this. And it should be a good business, but it’s not a specific requirement so far here in Romania. The market is at the very beginning.
BEX GIBSON The next item on the agenda is digital integration of handover information, so I think that Dave has kind of helped us into that one. What it says is we discuss on how operational teams are managing fragmented digital handover data from multiple contractor apps and tools. And then the consistency of spatial referencing and data integration. So Laetitia, what’s your experience with the different tools used by different contractors as well? How does that impact the handover of your information?
LAETITIA MARIE I would say like depending on how you’re working for us with like one EDMS or the 2D information is in one place in term of the BIM information. We are working on the same software to comment or review the information. In term of the asset we try to make it very useful, like for that what in term of the asset answer and over depending on the procurement from the client will say today's the best tool system. We are very early stage but for yet it's been more taking the technical sheet and put it back into the BIM model, which is requiring a lot of data manipulation.
For yet I don’t have a good system in place when everything will be automatically filling up the BIM model and making it easy for everybody. They need a lot of manipulation to take out this information and put it back into the system. In term of how constructant? 31 mins 17secs they are working in to one single source of information as we said. More difficulty in term of subcontractor, gets things the information. I suppose that in the next 5-7 years we will see better use of the digital system.
Today we have a lot of subcontractor which are not very good with BIM information. And a lot of design subcontractor which are struggling also to update their information. It’s very important to know when you start the contract to know who you are signing with and making sure that your partner, your design subcontractor, your consultant have also the knowledge and the capacity to support in this way.
BEX GIBSON So, it seems like you guys have got a really good process to make sure that it avoids that. Dave, because you accept this information, how do you manage it?
DAVE WILLIAMS Badly, is probably the answer. What tends to happen is, and this is always going back to what was said earlier around the use of COBie, we don’t tend to get COBie, or we get incomplete COBie. Which means we have to sort of trawl through documentation in order to pick out the information that is relevant to us and to our components in order to manage the building. And it takes a long time to do that because if you just take communal fire doors, for argument’s sake. There could be 40 of those in a building or more, of 3 or 4 different types.
And then trying to find which type belongs where in the building takes a lot of work because invariably it’s either hidden in documentation or hidden in spreadsheets. It’s just throwing bodies at the work basically. Half of the problem is trying to convince people that this isn’t a quick job, it needs someone dedicated to doing that as a full time post. And maybe a team of people doing it as a full time post.
BEX GIBSON It’s interesting because obviously it’s heavy on the whole making sure, the cross checking information. I wonder how many operational teams understand that and have invested in that team that you’re talking about? Because that will save money over the course. I know we haven’t got a lot of operational people in this meeting, but it would be interesting to know what other people are doing and what their teams look like. Has anyone got anything further on that handover information piece?
DAVE WILLIAMS One thing I could share since we’re talking about it, we were talking about a checklist earlier on. (shares screen). So, this is our Regulation 38 checklist. You can see here that the key thing around the fire safety structure as far as the strategy etc, escape strategy, passive fire measures, compartmentation. And once again, you can see here where we talk about the position and level, so that spatial information. Cavity barriers, fire doors, communication systems, CCTV which isn’t a mandatory thing, but you would expect it to be there. Signage, emergency lighting.
So, we have to go through this with any new building to check that we’ve got all of this information before we can say we’ve got all of the information to say that we fulfil the requirements of Regulation 38. And that’s just covering fire safety, not necessarily structural safety as far as external elements of the walls and things. So, even filling that one checklist out take a lot of time to make sure that we’ve got everything.
BEX GIBSON Dumitru, did you want to add something?
DUMITRU MINCIU In terms of handover of documentation.
BEX GIBSON Yeah, we’ve just chatted about the digital handover information and how that’s managed.
DUMITRU MINCIU Yes, this is a struggle around here because most of the projects are delivered on paper. So, paper is only present. But we as a company make some more difference and delivered even COBIe, but we delivered digital with digital signature, electronic signature with digital certificate which I think is essential. I know in the UK it’s not so important to formalise with this, basically there if you deliver electronically in the common data environment nobody questions the authenticity of the document.
Here is a lot of discussion around that, so they require an electronic signature, although nobody applies this law to electronically sign, they still prefer to sign on paper. Or to use PDF with all kind of work around the signature. But there also flamboyant approaches. I had an online extended discussion controversy around here. Some people were talking about electronically signing the IFC which I found kind of, to embed the electronic signature in the IFC file seemed a little bit stupid. In my opinion it’s not stupid, but golden plated, as we say in project management.
They are not able to deliver properly PDF electronically signed, but they are talking about singing the IFC. I don’t know what you think about that, but I don’t think the IFC is a properly contractual deliverable yet. COBie, it is, but IFC is only for coordination. But here people speak about delivering IFC like they’re born with IFC and they know IFC as good as everybody else.
DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, I agree with you on that and it doesn’t take into account the fact that you’ll have subcontractors that are dealing with one small element of a building. And they’re not going to have that expertise or that sign-off thing. They’re just people who installed doors, or people who installed windows, they’re not likely to have that skill set in-house to be able to go and sign off anything like that. They know everything about doors, but they don’t know about the general structure of the building.
DUMITRU MINCIU Yes, but they could deliver COBie data about the doors or whatever they deliver for the building without even knowing that they deliver COBie data and they are actually involved in a BIM process. But if you ask them to go into an IFC to extract their doors from IFC, then to replace the IFC of their doors with the IFC model. I don’t know, I don’t think this will ever work. In the first half of the 21st century I don’t think it will work.
BEX GIBSON So, moving on to the next part of the agenda. We’ve got warranties and post-installation inspections. I don’t really have a lot to say on this one, so I don’t know whether Dave or Richard have anything to add.
DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, it leads from that handover side of things. And we’ve experienced it in the past ourselves where there will be a warranty on a specific component. And part of that warranty may stipulate that that component needs to be serviced or inspected every 3 months or something like that. Now, if it takes you 6 months to finally get the data from a new development into your system and then you’ve realised that actually you should have been inspecting this component and then it fails, then it’s a struggle with insurance companies and a struggle with suppliers.
Because they can basically fire back at you and say it’s not our fault, you should have inspected that and maintained it during the last 6 months and you haven’t evidence you’ve done that. So, once again it comes down to lack of resources in a lot of cases where the importance of having that information as soon as possible so people can act on it is unfeasible, unless you throw enough resource at it to take that information and put it into a system. So that servicing and inspection routines are done within the correct timescales.
I don’t think that there is a quick answer to that, COBie helps because you can drop that data in, but if COBie doesn’t have information like the maintenance cycles or the inspection cycles in it. Then you’re going to have to go back into documentation or warranty certificates, which invariably is going to be some sort of signed document, the warranty certificate. It’s not data friendly unfortunately, it does mean that you have to go and check a) that it has got a warranty certificate, and b) what the contractual terms around that warranty are.
As anyone that’s bought anything from a kettle to a mobile phone knows, if you don’t check the warranty and your phone breaks they’ll go back and say ah, no sorry, the warranty expired a year ago and you’re stuck with it. I think that’s probably all that I can say on that subject because I don’t think there is an easy answer to it. A warranty needs a certificate which is usually a PDF or a scanned signed document, it’s not something that comes as a data friendly format.
RICHARD FREER Can I just say something. We’ve got very few people in this meeting and that’s my fault because I didn’t twig that we were clashing with DCW. The kind of people with enquiring minds and that have an opinion are exactly the profile of people who go to exhibitions, So, we normally have a lot more than this in the meeting, so apologies from me for that. But the meeting is not a waste of time because as we know this goes out with highpoint notes and videos and those videos are watched. So, don’t feel that what you’re saying here you’re talking in to thin air because it’s not the case. This is not a waste of time in any way, shape or form.
BEX GIBSON I was just thinking when you were chatting there Dave, because what came up in a previous discussion was, for example, lighting is installed quite early on and it’s used quite early on. So the warranty obviously, sometimes it passes while it’s still in construction, all of that side of things. Just really a question and I don’t know the answer, why when installing something, once it’s installed and commissioned, why would then the warranty not be sent to the client as opposed to just bundling it in with the handover documentation? Just doing it as it goes. Because that’s still handover, it’s still going to be there, but at least then everyone is a bit more knowledgeable about what’s needed.
DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, and I think you’re right, I think it probably requires a process change because I know, at least in our case, normally the operational teams don’t get involved from the start. They invariably get involved maybe 3 months, or if we’re lucky 6 months before completion. And often, particularly with development schemes, they start off with one name and then when they become operational they then have their lifecycle name. And we know all the different areas of that building and we add UPRNs to those in order to put them into operational systems. So, it’s usually only 3 months before where the operational teams really get involved in it.
And normally that is just to cover off what the building is going to be called in its operational use. And then how many flats there are, what the communal spaces are, how many sub-blocks there are in that building. And that basic data tends to get put in first in order to assign UPRNs in the asset management operational system. And then at that point we tend to concentrate more on the key compliance components, that’s gas, electricity, fire safety etc. because those are the ones that are critical to the building.
And it’s things like structural elements and floors and windows and roofs, that sort of stuff gets added at the later stage because it’s not regulatory compliant stuff, it’s more maintenance, servicing, inspection stuff. So, that’s the answer from our perspective as to why, because we basically don’t have something to hang that data on until it gets to the point that we’re not ready to look at occupying. But it’s a good point in theory that the development team should be looking after that, but they don’t necessarily look after that.
BEX GIBSON I guess that it goes back to the resourcing as well. You’ve got someone who needs to remember and store it and put it somewhere.