BIMinAM Operations Working Group Meeting 18-09-2025

BIMinAM OPERATIONS WORKING GROUP MEETING 18-09-2025

RICHARD FREER …the reason that we’re calling it a Taskforce is that it is actually very proactive. And going out and helping companies to find the best solutions for their own particular circumstances. We’ve about 150 lined up for that already, if anybody wants to join just put ‘Taskforce’ in the chat and one our steering commission wii have a chat.

BEX GIBSON And the Golden Thread awareness badge, how does everyone feel about that? And do you think that would be a useful thing for everyone to have as a competence highlight?

RICHARD FREER It’s about demonstrating you’re aware of what should be done. There is a level of competence, but more than anything else it’s about just that you’re aware. You’ve read the documentation, you’ve read the guidance that we’ve prepared so at least you’ve gone to that level.

BEX GIBSON And I guess that the question for this group is on that, who has put their name forward? Will they find it useful? Is there anything that you think should be considered as well with that badge? We’re the operations people so we need to have awareness of that Golden Thread as well. OK, moving on, early engagement and lifecycle collaboration. This is something we talk about a lot, it’s getting that early engagement so that that Golden Thread goes all of the way through. And it’s to avoid what we have seen about these inefficiencies and information and the gaps that we’ve seen at post-handover. We agreed the input should be integrated from the project’s start, I think that’s honestly one of the key things that we do bring up quite a lot.

Has anyone got any good practice? Any advice on that where it’s worked really well? Where you see some pitfalls maybe. This a working group so we’re here to talk and share good ideas, so let’s discuss challenges and opportunities for the early engagement side of things.

JACK WHITE I guess my focus is very much not on that handover part. We’ve got a lot of buildings to manage and we get a few handed over a year, so it’s a small percentage, so it’s not a focus. I would like to be able to work more closely with the development teams to understand how that can work well, but there’s been a lot of changes there. And I think we can create a Golden Thread from scratch about existing buildings, so if we do get information passed across great, but we’re set up to not expect that because we’ve obviously got Section 106s, we’ve got land led, we’ve got a range of things, these different architects, whatever it might be.

So, we could try and get them set up to provide information in the way that we want it, but the time and effort and expense to do that, I don’t really see it as being particularly worthwhile. So, it’s not really been something that I’ve spent a lot of time and effort on, I’ve got some kind of broad agreements on how things should be passed across, but that doesn’t mean that’s how they are passed across.

BEX GIBSON Yeah, of course. And I guess that the broad agreements, the way it's tricky when you've got this Section 106 and you've got these developments that have sort of just been handed over where you had no input at that beginning stage. I guess is there an opportunity? Because it’s about engaging with the industry and creating that framework for just to have all of this information ready because in this way this is actually what we need for the way to operate. and to save that sort of state of information which we usually get at the end of a project. And how would you see that work? Do you think that would be a good idea? Or is it not realistic?

JACK WHITE I think we need things that work for our own organisations so I think broad agreement across the sector about what we need. And that can be just what information we need in a kind of more database format, what information we want in documents. Floor plans are obviously going to be in a document, building height somewhere in the database. Something like that would be good as a kind of starting point of minimum asks, but I don’t really see enough work going on the operations side to say this is the information that we need to run a building and understand it. So, I’m not sure we’re coherent enough as a sector to be able to go to the development side as a sector and say these are our minimum requirements.

RICHARD HAZARD As an interim for the last 15 years working on different projects for different clients, housing associations and local authorities. And I’ve found that the handover has been different depending on who you’re speaking to. We know that we’ve got a set of information that should come over, but often it doesn’t come over, or it’s very difficult to find, they way that it’s filed to try and find it. So, the last couple of ones that I’ve dealt with, we’ve tried to work with the contractor early days to lay out what we actually want, apart from what’s required. And while they sound like they’re going to be helpful, as soon as you ask, for example, the fire door markers and the same on sliding windows and stuff like that which are all Q codes which you can get the maintenance information or resident’s information of how to use them, all then comes at an extra cost. It’s never part of the package that they think they should provide, they think that’s an extra.

So, I’d welcome some idea of trying to get a standard list. And I know every building is different so therefore it’s not always the same, but you could at least have a standard list and the way that you want it laid out. Because when I’ve been on the other end of the line when there’s been a failure, and I’ve then tried to go through the documents to find out what the specification was or whatever, it is so difficult because you don’t know where they’ve stored it. So again, even if we could agree some sort of file layout so that we all know where we’re going for the different bits and pieces would be useful.

BEX GIBSON Yeah and do you think that’s, what with the introduction of the new BRPD Building Regs Principal Designer, that side of things, they’re going to have to sign off the compliance of the design. And then you’ve got the BRPC who is going to have to sign off the compliance of the build. Do you think that those documents will become more and more accessible? Because you’re going to have to use them to prove compliance now. It’s not just as we built the building, someone signs it off. And actually as an industry do you think they will take that as a call to arms to make sure that everything is in there?

RICHARD HAZARD It would be really good if it did, but the problem I’ve had is with Building Control. They don’t always understand, especially on the larger buildings, and I know they’re supposed to be specialists, but there’s a lot of people that I see that just don’t really understand what that’s about. So therefore making sure that, because they’re the ones that ultimately sign it off to say that it’s compliant. I’d like to think it will, let’s hope it will, but the experience that I’ve had to date hasn’t gone along that line.

BEX GIBSON Yeah, it is a very new thing, we’re all sort of still navigating what those roles mean. It’s stuff that we should have been doing anyway, but obviously Grenfell happened. There is a reason why we need this sign off, we need this evidential thing. So, it will be interesting to see what comes out of that.

PHIL CHRISTOPHER I’m not involved in fire safety, but I’m coming at this from the perspective of working 30 years under the CDM regulations. We only do CDM principal designer, I don’t do BR principal designer, but just listening to Richard and the comments that are being made about gathering information, what would have been the old Reg 38 fire safety information, exactly the same issues I’ve been having for the last 30 years. Trying to get health & safety files put together and cross referencing to O&M information. Everybody has their own different take on what’s actually written in Appendix 4 of L153 that tells you what should go in a health & safety file as a minimum recommendation.

So, one of the reasons that I picked up the invite and registered was to basically understand if I’m acting as the CDM principal designer, how can I support the BRPD, the end user, in making sure that all of the different bits of information that we need are gathered in a way that is easily accessible? You can actually find it rather than someone picks up a document that says go and look at the O&M manual and that’s all that it says. And you don’t know which O&M manual, where it is or anything. So, I feel the pain, so any guidance that there was to elaborate exactly what information is required for that Golden Thread has got to be a bonus. And as much detail as possible.

BEX GIBSON Absolutely, and listening to you speak it feels like there’s a sort of collaboration communication thing between the BRPD and the CDM PD. Because the BRPD to sign off, they will need to know all of the information that you’re asking for anyway. So at what point does it become a waste of energy having it in different places in different formats? Why don’t we all see it in a holistic, we all need this, so let’s just manage that in a way. And you mention the Reg 38 side of things, this is a regulation that’s been around for years and they still haven’t got it right or consistent. How would you start those conversations to improve that? Because it seems like a huge thing to even start.

PHIL CHRISTOPHER With all of the changes and obviously the impending information of the Building Safety Act, we were actually working on a residential scheme which was in line of sight of Grenfell. It included a 38-storey tower, a 24-storey tower and a number of other very high-rise buildings. And 3 or 4 years ago we were actually saying to the client and the contractor, even though it’s totally outside of our remit Reg 38, fire safety information, what’s going to be needed so that when you actually finish the building and you want to get occupation, even though the new regulations may not apply to you, there may be a retrospective need to get a licence to occupy.

And if the Regulator then says to you I need this and that information, I need an electronic format, we need to be thinking about what we need. So we started that conversation 3 or 4 years ago, with that client and the project team to chase up people to try and get. And even at the 11th hour when we’re finishing the building people were still running around scratching their heads. But I would love to see it. We’ve always taken the approach that if you think of a health & safety file...for the CDM regs, it’s like the index to an encyclopedia. And you’ve got all of these O&M manuals that are full of information. If you can go to a single document that tells you where to actually find the specifics that lead you down that part, surely that’s got to be a bonus.

And I would like to see the health & safety file might do that in the same way it can lead you to and this is where you’ll find the fire safety information. And then that cross references in the same way to all of the other information. But, I may be dreaming.

BEX GIBSON Absolutely, I don’t know who else can share what I’ve been going through because I’m writing building safety case reports. Going through those documents it is quite an intensive task. So having a shared index or a shared understanding of how, already existing buildings it’s always going to be an issue. But if we’re inviting 2,000 HRBs on to the market every year, let’s get those working sensibly in terms of information file management. Has anyone got any other comments on this subject?

DAVE WILLIAMS Just listening to what everyone says it is a universal problem. With Regulation 38 before handover we have a checklist which we go through to make sure we’ve got all of that information. And I think that particularly on fire safety information there is definitely a lot more focus on that nowadays on making sure that all of the information is available. I think where we’ve found things are lacking is just general information about the building etcetera. And the funny thing is I’ve been talking within our organisation about this in that we always do pre-occupation fire risk assessments. So with any new build, we always send someone in, do a pre-occupation FRA, pick up anything that we think requires attention. It could be something as simple as signage or it could be something more urgent.

To give you an idea, one of the buildings that we got handed over fairly recently, we found that where they had the escape stairs they’d kindly decided that they’d put a heater in there in case it got cold. So there was an electrical heater as part of the build, so we’ve had to get them to take that out. It wouldn’t have been something that someone would have picked up through looking through countless tomes of documentation, it was something that was done with eyes on. And because of that I’ve also been advocating for pre-occupation stock condition surveys because with stock condition surveys in the past people have tended to wait until the building is handed over and occupied and then scheduled for someone to go in there and just pick up the generic information about each flat.

Which of course causes problems if you’ve got new residents in there. Issues with access with some residents, you’ve got things in the way, furniture and all of that sort of thing that you’re trying to navigate around in order to check things. Whereas obviously if you’ve got that empty building pre-occupation, you can send surveyors in and they can pick up all of that information through site. We know what information we require as a standard stock condition survey, so it means that we can collate the information on specific components far quicker using that method than trawling through umpteen bits of documentation to try and find out exactly what’s in a particular unit or communal area etcetera. So, I’ve now been pushing for future handovers to go down that route. So that yes we will have the paper work there, but in actual fact from a perspective of man hours8 it’s actually quicker to send surveyors in there and do a stock condition survey.

That covers off a lot of the more generic components and then Regulation 28 in particular picks up obviously the more fire safety related things, so does the pre-occupation FRA. So I think there’s two ways of tackling this. And I thin yes, there definitely needs to be, it would be lovely if we could get as a sector a predefined structure for information that everyone agrees on. Which we could then provide to principal designers, principal contractors and say this is the folder structure that we want you to follow, rather than each designer or contractor just doing it their own way. Because it means that from one building to the next you’re looking in different places for the same information.

BEX GIBSON Dave, on that, just as a point of interest. When you go and do the stock condition surveys do you find many discrepancies between the information that you’ve given? That’s concerning.

DAVE WILLIAMS Yes, which is why we’ve found so much value in it. Particularly where we’ve done post-occupation stock condition surveys we’ve come back with completely different information than what the information is that’s been provided. And it’s only because you’ve got eyes on because you can read what it says in the documentation and you go oh, it’s this model of door and it’s this bracing or whatever. And then you get to the actual building itself and you realise that that’s completely wrong. It was something that was probably agreed at the time and then the contractor ran out of that door and thought oh, I’ve got a couple in the shed that are slightly different but they’ll be alright. And stuck them in there and one was the wiser. So it does definitely clarify what exactly has been installed as built as opposed to just reading through documentation.

BEX GIBSON And that what you’ve just explained there is the huge issue, this is what has happened in so many buildings. It’s why we’ve brought in the Gateways and change management things. Again, it would be interesting to see as the regime, as the Gateway 3s come through and the information is passed on to Ops whether actually the quality does change. So this might be something worth people just keeping an eye on and sharing, if you’ve had one that’s successful at Gateway 3, but you’ve gone and done a stock condition survey and actually information that’s passed at Gateway 3 is not quite what is there. Then the process might not be working as intended and we might need to highlight it to the industry or the government. Whoever is believing that this is going to fix the intrinsic problem of tell us what you’ve built.

DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, and the problem is it’s often the case that it’s unknown to the principal contractor and principal designer as well because it will be a subcontractor that’s gone in there to put in those particular components and make their own changes without informing anyone else. Because it is some subcontractor onsite who’s making a decision without any feedback to the people that are actually providing the information to say by the way, you know we said that we were putting these in. Well, we’ve found a cheaper alternative so we’ll put those in instead and not mentioned it. And we find that all of the time with new builds. And that’s why I think there’s definitely a requirement for that sort of eyes on due diligence pre-occupation because it does answer a lot of questions.

It’s simple stuff, like for instance in a particular new build the other day we were doing, I was just walking round looking at the place because there was a few problems. Now, I’m no expert and they had a cycle store in the basement with some nice convenient electrical plugs for people to go and plug in their lithium battery mobility scooters and things like that. And the plugs didn’t have locks on them, so they weren’t lockable plugs. And I said surely we should have locks on these so that we don’t have people just randomly going and charging batteries there. And they said oh, they should have been lockable, they were lockable in the other two buildings. So we got them changed over, but no one would have known, there was nothing in any documentation that would explain that. And it is a fire risk.

So it’s just tiny things like that that you wouldn’t have even seen in any paperwork. And even if you did it would be buried in the small print of Section 207 page 543 that those sockets were lockable. So I think information is great as evidence, but often there is a gap between that and the reality of what actually is in the building, to a small component level like that.

BEX GIBSON And what level do you hold contractors to account for those discrepancies?

DAVE WILLIAMS Well, this is where the defects period comes in and this is where you spend loads of time. And once again, this comes back down to working out what requires the most time and effort. In that with that particular example of those plugs, we just got a contractor in and changed the plugs and made a note of it in our asset management system that that’s in there. Because as much as you then want to go back to the original contract and say can you go and get a contractor and go and do this or whatever. Then you spend arguments going oh well, you should have notified us 6 months earlier about this, how you would if no one had actually noticed it.

So you spend more times in meetings arguing about who is going to get it fixed than the cost of actually just getting someone in and getting it fixed. Obviously if it’s a more serious thing or a larger more expensive component then it’s worth having those conversations and worth having those arguments. But in other cases, it’s just better to fix it yourself, note it yourself, make sure in your asset management system it’s got the correct component information.

PHIL CHRISTOPHER Does that support the argument for bring back the Clerk of works?

DAVE WILLIAMS And that’s where there isn’t an argument for that without a doubt…but funnily enough we went down that route originally, having a Clerk of works specifically for alterations buildings to make sure that works were being done to standard and we were getting the right information. The problem was that he was absolutely brilliant onsite, but absolutely useless with IT systems. So, he even got to the stage where he would go onsite, go and check the credentials of the contractors and throw them off the site if he didn’t think they had the right credentials, he was absolutely brilliant at that.

Getting back to putting can you send that in an email, yeah, hold on a minute, emails, where’s that one again?So the role definitely, but trying to find someone with a suitable skill set that can do both the actual onsite man management and the backend information management is hard to come by.

ALEX OLDMAN Just to extend the conversation a little bit and bring some points home. It’s absolutely right it would be fantastic as a working group especially to come forward with some recommendations about what the asset information requirements are for properties as they’re yes, working their way through new builds, but also for existing properties. So we can apply those to understand as a template to say this information is missing about this particular property, those gaps are just as important as the detailed information we’ve actually got in there.

And yes, it makes sense that we should have that as we do the 2025 standard, we do the 2026 standard, have that feedback loop that Bex was describing about making sure that following the completion of buildings as they go live, we discover new things as Dave has just mentioned lockable mains, chargeable locks for electric charging in bike storage, that’s the kind of level of detail that we should feedback in. So, let’s have an information standard for the data that should be collected to at least use that as a template, let’s apply that.

RICS are doing an interesting piece of work at the moment to work on some new stock condition standards and I’m watching with interest what they’re going to be producing as a consequence of that. But for my purposes, I’m interested in making sure that we’ve got sufficient information for the planned preventative maintenance on all of the building components so we know what activities need to he happening, what inspections need to be happening. I’m interested in making sure that we’ve got information about condition so that we can appropriately plan for life cycle replacement investment in that building, looking at the whole life cost of maintaining those buildings.

And I don’t have specific comments on the Clerk of works, but yes, they still do exist, there are people out there doing that job. Maybe not with that title, but there are people bringing those sort of standards to bear. So, this is definitely a recurring need, I’m talking to my customers every day and if we could as a group BIM4Housing come forward and say yeah, this is the information standard that we’re suggesting that we need, that would be a really worthwhile piece of work to do. And I’m very happy to put time forward to participate in that to share my ideas.

The last point I wanted to make was there was an earlier comment about structuring data into folders and defining what information we need which is a good thing. But increasingly I see that it’s not so necessary as it once was to provide that formal structure for that information. And I’m coming at this from a building information perspective. The technology we have today, you don’t need information held in a structured way. Unstructured data is just as good, just as accessible, you can ask the kind of questions of it that you need. But we are familiar with the idea of filing data into folders and if that’s there that’s good.

We want it there, we want to be able to find it, but we also want to verify it and check that data that’s there somehow missing against the template, is it the right quality? How up-to-date is that information? Is it from 10 years ago or was it updated yesterday by a visual inspection? Or a bit of sensor information coming in as well. So, this all needs to go into the big picture and things are changing fast.

BEX GIBSON To just add to that, in addition to an asset management sort of look at it, my side I work on building safety and making sure that what is built is safe. And all of this feeds into we need to make sure the building has been built as its designed because if it’s not, if I go onsite and there’s a wall that’s 30 minutes not 60, that changes the safety of that building and why it’s been doing it. So absolutely, we can probably all wax lyrical about this for quite some time, we’re only as good as what we know about our buildings. Has anyone else got any points on this subject?

DAVE WILLIAMS I think one of the further points with item 5 actually is sort of covered off with what we’ve just said there. Item 3, industry challenge and gaps. This all sort of piles into each other in a way. Knowledge gaps exist, especially internationally regarding post-Grenfell regulations. In the last meeting it was noted the concern shared about information overload and unclear client expectations and the difficulty of achieving standardised timely data submissions to all project stages. And I think my view is that often operational teams tend to get invited in at the last minute and it’s left to the development teams to deal with the first couple of Gateways. And it’s only really at Gateway 3 where operational teams get involved.

And once again I think that’s also because operational teams tend to be quite focused on their one area of expertise. So, if you take compliance you’ve invariably got someone who is very good with gas compliance, someone that’s good with electrical compliance, someone that’s good with lift compliance etc. And getting all of those people in the room with all of their shared requirements for information is pretty difficult to manage. So there should in a way perhaps be looking at bringing in certain people separately to deal with their area of expertise, rather than just bringing anyone who’s an interested party into one big room and then saying right, let’s talk through this information that’s been handed over.

Because on one is an expert on everything. And that’s where information overload can happen because everyone is looking at their own area, but everyone is trying to talk and ask for things at the same time which can be overwhelming to development teams because they’re being pulled left, right and centre being asked for this, that and the other. So there is an argument for those operational teams to be involved in their own specialist areas at an earlier stage so that they get the information as soon as it’s available for them to then apply their expertise to look for problems in that information. That is a business process issue in a lot of cases.

And it’s really down to the people commissioning those buildings to change the way that they work to accommodate those specialist requirements. Does anyone do that already? Or is it just basically dump and run? And ten tell everyone all right, all of the information is there, now go and find it. And I know for instance one of the guys in one of the buildings we were dealing with recently, there was an issue and he said oh right, I need the electrical diagram for the building. Could they find it? No, because no one had even thought about making sure it was there because the fire guys aren’t really that interested in where the electrics are and how the circuits are done and where all of the electrical stuff feeds back to.

It was only really the specialist electrical engineer that needed that diagram and at that point it was a case of oh blimey, we’re going to have to go back to the principal designer and principal contractor and say could you get that bit of information for me because no one had known when it was there. It wasn’t I don’t think a Regulation 38 requirement.

BEX GIBSON I don’t know whether there is a benefit to having a conduit who knows what the operational people need. Because if there’s that gap you’re never going to get the full documentation on it on handover because you don’t have that holistic operational view on it. So, that’s a huge challenge.

DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, it has been for us without a doubt. And it tends to evolve into countless hours spent in meetings. Instead of people doing the job that they’re being paid for, they’re sat in the meeting arguing about ah well, where’s this information? Why hasn’t this been provided? And it could have been handled far easier and far quicker pre-occupation than trying to rectify this post-occupation.

BEX GIBSON So you said that you have a Reg 38 checklist, but can we all help design an operational checklist? Based on what we all know, we’re all in this operations thing, we’re talking about information management, that’s what this group is all about. We’re here to chat about it and see if there’s an easy fix and if not we can sort of help develop. And what I’m hearing is it’s that section at handover where you do that check, at least of information and then you go and do the stock and then it’s slightly different. But if you can check that you’ve got the information in the first place and that you know that your check is what the organisation needs.

It’s not just like what you think you need like oh, we need to know the colour of the door, it doesn’t matter. But we do need to know how wide the doors are, for example. And whether we can have an industry standard and just work on what do we need to operate this building. Because it’s going to be very similar across the board. We all have to operate our buildings so we’ve all got to follow a very similar process. So how do we rationalise that?

DAVE WILLIAMS And it’s interesting, particularly with new builds, normally the first thing that we make sure we have when it gets handed over to operational teams is anything to do with gas because obviously there’s strict regulations around gas servicing. And then following that there tends to be, I think we had a list of about 52 compliance related components that required a specific servicing regime. And those will be universal across the board in the industry because everyone that has a new building knows that the boiler needs servicing over a specific interval, the fire doors need servicing and inspection.

And so I think it would be pretty easy to pull together a sort of universal list of compliance related components that require servicing and inspection. With stock condition, as Alex said I’d be interested to see what RICS are doing with this new thing for stock condition surveys. Because we have a template that we use for that that tends to cover over standard components, be it roofs, windows, doors, electrical stuff. And we have all of that stuff in there, plus obviously the 29 HHSRS requirements that we have to inspect as ell as part of stock condition surveys. And once again I would have thought those would be pretty universal across the sector.

If we could get a few examples and compare one stock condition survey to another and one list of servicing components with another, it would be interesting to see whether we could basically say here is a definitive list, or as close to a definitive starting point for both of those areas operationally. And then some of the other stuff is not necessarily going to be anything that you’re going to pick up, either in documentation or through servicing or through stock condition. And I can give another good example of that one in that one of the new builds has got a gate to allow people to get into the car park. It’s a lovely solid steel gate with lattice work, you can only get in with a fob, there’s a handle on the inside that you can open.

This lovely lattice thing obviously has holes about this big and they worked out that people were sticking a pen through the holes to push the handle on the inside down and then actually work it down so it was opening from the outside. So you could basically open this supposedly secure gat from the outside using a pen. Now that’s something that you wouldn’t pick up by reading a documentation, you’d just say oh it’s great, it’s got this solid steel gate with fob locking. That’s once again only something that you notice either eyes on or because people have been breaking in to it. So we’ve now had to go and get someone to weld a steel place on the inside of this door in order to stop people being able to do that.

There are always going to be those sort of things that are never going to be picked up until the building is in use basically. But compliance, regulations determine a lot of servicing and inspection schedules, so we know which components virtually everyone has to do. Stock condition, there are certain things that would be universal. Some people may go further with their stock condition surveys, some people might do a light touch stock condition survey. I think we’d have to see different examples and whether we can use this group to provide those examples for comparison.

ALEX OLDMAN Just going a little further on that, I’ll just speak up for some of the other nations in this wonderful United Kingdom we have. We’ve got to be careful that we don’t focus specifically on England, but I’m sure that we’re talking nationally as well as potentially internationally in this group. But it’s interesting how different housing standards vary across the UK, the government standards I mean. For example, the Welsh housing quality standard has been updated coming up for 2 years ago now, and that goes to a much higher level of detail. And in Wales they’re doing Level 3 RICS surveys, so they’re doing structural surveys as part of a standard housing quality, they need to know if the building is structurally stable.

There are elements of that in stock condition surveys that you’re doing in England of course, but it’s actually prescribed in Wales now. And Scotland has got a completely different focus on the energy performance of buildings which again requires a higher level of detail and knowledge about the building in terms of its fabric, its makeup, its wall construction, for example. It’s really hard to know the construction type on the building if you just walk in for the first time. if it’s a new build you can potentially make assumptions or look at some plans, but again retrospectively it’s sometimes really hard to discover that information.

I was going to make a point as you were saying about the standard building components. You can look to standards like Uniclass to allow you to categorise the main building elements and collect data around those. And enforce SFG type approach so that you can make some models of bits of equipment, if you’re thinking about the planned preventative maintenance. Which really nicely dovetails in with again the total operational approach to the building. The thing that I’ve always struggled with and it’s more about my personal area of expertise, that is I’ve got a big gap around fire safety. Building safety, the technical aspects, as Bex was describing the difference between a 30-minute door or a wall and a 60-minute wall and how that will compromise the building design and performance under a fire scenario.

And I don’t know how we’re able to arm our stock condition surveyors who are obviously very knowledgeable, trained, accredited, they’re professional building experts. But what additional knowledge do we need to be able to give to our building inspectors who are going into these buildings all of the time, to make sure that they’re able to spot the problem with the fire safety issue that might be there. Even if they’re not doing a fire risk assessment, how can they spot a 60-minute wall as opposed to a 30-minute wall? And how can we arm our colleagues in the industry with the people with the knowledge to be able to do that?

DAVE WILLIAMS I think that is one of the big reasons we do pre-occupation FRAs now is before we let anybody into a new build we do have fire engineers and fire risk assessors go into the building and double check that everything is as it should be. And hence why I know things, like Bex mentioned, supposedly they’re supposed to be fitted with 60-minute doors and you find out that 2 of the flats have got 30-minute doors. Or one of them had a gap of about 2-inches from the bottom of the door so that it wasn’t sealing properly, hence that got replaced pre-occupation which was really good.

So, apart from the fact that we then had from a usage perspective, residents where they were putting nice welcome mats outside the door and things like that which was crushing the intumescent strips that were sealing the door. Those sort of things you can’t legislate for, but that’s part of the reason for the pre-occupation FRAs. And those are fairly standard across the board. The templates will differ from organisation to organisation, but the majority of the stuff that’s looked for is universal.

BEX GIBSON And I guess anecdotally as well, just as another example, we get these beautiful fire strategies. And I’ve come across one where it said that there aren’t sprinklers and I’ve gone on to site and there were. Which then brings into question the validity of the information. That’s quite a big thing, you’re not going to just. So, it’s a challenge, that’s why this group exists because I’m sure that we all share the same frustrations, the same issues. And it’s about trying to find a sensible and realistic solution because it’s such a big problem that we can’t solve the entire industry, but we might be able to solve our little corner of how to work it as well.

PHIL CHRISTOPHER One of the things that we’ve come across where our clients are using a third-party organisation to compile health & safety information, whether it’s a health & safety file, the O&Ms. What we’ve started pushing for is that all right, you’re not technically capable to audit that information, but request a validation statement or a conformity statement from whoever is providing you that information. So that when you upload it onto this electronic database they are actually putting their name on the line that says the information I have provided you with is accurate and is as-built or as-installed. So that then when you actually come to do your pre-occupation inspections you find something is wrong, immediately they’re liable.

BEX GIBSON And that’s really what the BRPC should be doing. It’s a fairly new role, so it’s going to take a while for it to really bed in, but the BRPC signs a piece of paper ultimately saying I’ve built this in line with the BRPD who has also signed a piece of paper, design so it is compliant with the building regulations. It’s that final piece of paper that says this is how the building has actually been built, here you go. And if you go and find that it wasn’t how it’s built, it’s probably going to be quite often in the next few months because it’s a new thing. But hopefully that will change the attitude to change in terms of if the BRPC is going to get penalised because one of their subcontractors made a change.

Like Dave was saying earlier, that was just a fire door, oh, we’ll just change it to this hone because it’s what we’ve got in the garage. if the BRPC is going to get penalised for that they’re going to find a way to work around that because it will affect their bottom line at the end of the day. So it will be interesting to see how these roles will impact how as operators we receive our information because hopefully it will change because it’s in law now.

PHIL CHRISTOPHER I’m looking at it, as I say i don’t get involved in the fire safety side and the building regs PD, but we had do as CDM principal designer. And obviously it’s been written into the CDM regulations since 1994 and we still have issues. So one of the reasons why I was interested in the working group was from the point of view of saying well, as a CDM principal designer or a consultant to a CDM principal designer and often working under a design & build principal contractor. Saying to them that we’re trying to understand everybody’s role and what everybody needs to do, so it all ideally would all merge together and we’re all working for the same goal. I’ve worked as a Clerk of works as well, I’ve worked in building maintenance before, so yeah, it’s 30-odd years in the industry, we’re still working at it.

BEX GIBSON Well, precisely and I mean the whole premise of this is to avoid the usual things that happen in design & build where you don’t design it and you design it as you go along. And you end up with maybe something that’s not quite the same as it was at the beginning, but there is none of that change control. So what this process is trying to do is hopefully keep any change control under control. So yeah, it will be interesting to see how it goes. Like you say, what you’ve been working on has been in law for many, many years and people are still getting it wrong. But we remain optimistic.

I think in our general chat here we’ve covered quite a bit of what we have in the agenda. So we’ve spoken about Reg 38 and I know that Alex is mentioning about the Uniclass and the standardised information management. And I guess that falls into a sort of different kind of handover to ops because different teams in operations use different tools to complete what they need to do; their compliance activities, their operation activities. So it’s about how that can be rationalised, how you work that. I don’t have a lot of experience, I know it exists because I’ve been in companies where there’s various teams with different software packages that feed into different things. So it will be interesting to see what people have experience with that in operational capacity and how standardised formats could help, or whether it wouldn’t help at all.

JACK WHITE I’ve looked at quite a few of the standards and tried to think about how they would work in terms of application and I have to say I’m not a fan of any of them in particular.I think quite a few of them confuse form and function. So, you’re trying to classify something as a steel door. Well, as far as I’m concerned a door is a door and has a number of different attributes. The material, does it have glazing? Yes or no, does it have this or that? And those are attributes of the door. But if you go into the standards it doesn’t look at attributes against it, it normally tries to classify it by the type of thing it is and the material that it is. Which if you’re going to look at a door and it had a large glazed section. Is that a glass door? Or is it a timber door? Because it’s got glazing in it.

You could then classify it as door because you can go up a level, or you can classify it as glass door and classify it as timber door. No one is wrong, but you’ve got three different outcomes there. That’s just one example and there are a lot of them around the actions or services on systems or things like that aren’t particularly applicable to housing and particularly social housing. So I have to say I don’t think they’re particularly useful. It’s a great starting point and what we’ve done is come up with our own and then mapped where we do link up. But I don’t think the standards are particularly useful in themselves in terms of just being able to say well, if people just used that standard then that would be good.

DAVE WILLIAMS Yeah, I think I agree with you on that because and Alex, you probably have a view on this, but I’ve yet to see a successful import of a COBie spreadsheet into an IT system that the operational teams use.

ALEX OLDMAN I cannot agree or disagree on that particular point. I think much work has been done on the handover of information from COBie, mapping it in. I think where it’s working well on COBie datasets is on the spatial data, mapping spatial information is critical on the next stage of what we need to be doing in holding our building information. I do like Jack’s point about when is a door not a door. My grandmother used to had a joke, when it’s a jar. But you’re absolutely right, it is that critical point as we handover from construction to operations, the COBie process itself. We’ve got all of this brilliant information that’s been defined in terms of asset information requirements, the level of detail that’s required during the phases of construction.

Architect, contractors, and now we’re talking about compliance people as well, all have got their input into the rich dataset that’s required. And then it hits the operational system and in my case my interest is in the asset management and facilities management areas. And a whole load of that information just isn’t needed at that particular point. And so you could argue if you’re coming at it from the operational end that you only need this dataset, I’m only interested in makes and models of what it is and where it is. But it absolutely matters in terms of the electrical layout of the building, that’s very important from a fire safety perspective and it’s important from a planned maintenance perspective. And if you want to be knocking out walls or extending the building it’s important to understand whether you can do that.

So, you’ve got to take this whole holistic view. But yeah, there are multiple IT providers trying to bring that information across, there are expert systems out there and that will provide a home for that data. And mapping that across is one of those current challenges. I don’t see it happen often enough, I’ve probably seen half a dozen COBie datasets which have come with new builds that people have brought into systems that I’ve been in some part responsible for, half a dozen in 20 years. I’m sure there’s a lot more than that happening, but I just don’t necessarily get visibility of it. Maybe I only get involved when things start going wrong.

BEX GIBSON Does anyone else have any comments on this or any experience or any ideas? I know that, especially for the door thing, we did a fire door technical sheet.

ALEX OLDMAN You need to check out the BIM4Housing website because we have published some data standards on information like there is a door sheet. So that does actually answer Jack’s question of when is a door not a door. When it’s a door set was my education piece from reading that particular piece of output, but that’s some good quality work to help you understand the information requirements in there. And that also discusses some of the nuances which we’ve been discussing today.

BEX GIBSON We’ve covered quite a lot really: information management, standardisation, that handover piece. Item 6 is international perspectives. Do we have any international perspectives present today? We had a really good conversation last time about those alignment with the practices. So, if there is anybody who has anything to talk about in terms of that please do use this opportunity.

CHRISTOPHER I’m from View City, we do digital twins. We have a smart platform that we’ve created that holds big city-wide twins and we’re used by architects, planners, also recently Clarion use us for generative design. So we can generate big engineering units as well for feasibility. I’m here because I’m on Linkedin with Richard and George.

RICHARD FREER Are you the ones that do the whole city?

CHRISTOPHER Yeah, we do that in a gaming engine, but we’ve actually got a reboot coming through where we’re using the unreal engine. But our model will be platform agnostic, so we’re creating machine-readable models that can integrate with data laters. You can put full BIM models into them as well. So, in terms of the spatial relevance of what we’re doing, I think a lot of things when you put them in PDFs and spreadsheets they get lost and it’s really easy to misinterpret them or say is that the right building. I think that spatial context can really right a lot of wrongs and can really reduce errors, certainly in feasibility. One of the things that we’re also looking at because we can now put in a bunch of different data layers, is it’s all well and good having thousands of data layers.

Making them accessible at a click and saying right click, how many policy documents does this bit of the building here refer to? That’s the kind of thing that we’re looking at at the moment is giving you quick access to something that you’re in the right place, you know where it is and now you want to see what relates to it. We’re also to create the unreal engine reboot we worked with an asset management company in New York who has a bunch of towers everywhere. And they wanted to understand things like fenestration in windows and who got what light where. Certainly when other buildings are being developed nearby you have things like rights of light, something that you could look at straight away and understand exactly what would happen and model it yourself.

So with our relaunch we are moving into territory where we now can accept BIM models and we can now work with operations and asset management. And of course we do have housing associations who want to use our generative design tools who I’m working with. So I’m trying to figure out how we can some way be a part of this tapestry. That’s pretty much why I’m here sitting silently in the background because I can’t really speak on any of the subject matter that your expertise can, but what we can potentially do is provide that context and that one platform that people can put the information in where it’s easily accessible.

BASIT IBITOYE I’ve been enjoying the conversation so far regarding how you basically standardise the information and exchange between optimising it for the operation of the building as well. I also agree with Christopher because I work at Parametrix, we digitise all of these assets and prepare them for the operation office of the building. You’ve made some important points regarding classification, attributes and all of these things. What we’ve done is basically not rely entirely on just the classification because it just tells you if it’s a method or if it has glass doors etc. So we added extra layers of information so it’s like there’s a generic classification, for instance a case study does.

You have like extra attributes or extra layers that tells you oh, for this specific door it has glass, this is the material of the door, this is the dimension of the door, this is where the door swings into. And also in terms of spatial relationship it belongs to this floor, this level, this flat etc. So you have a lot of plethora of information regarding that door. And that is just like a universe classification so it’s like there is so much broader horizon to what you can achieve depending on each classification and every information that is required. So it’s like across multiple disciplines, partly MEP as well, you can tell deducting systems, you can tell piping, water and gas systems. So you see how they work, the special relationship amongst each other and all of the required information that you need to know about specific classification as well.

In terms of successful integration with card FM systems we’ve also been exploring with some of our clients as well connecting it to a common data environment. We’ve tried around Siemens, along those lines. So. it’s still in development, but at least we’re starting to see the fruits of all of the labour that we’re putting in.

PHIL CHRISTOPHER My experience is more of the front end of the construction and when we’re handing buildings over, using systems for compiling information. And I haven’t had a great experience of systems where they compile information. It just seems to be very much the case of we’ll put a load of information about doors, windows, walls in different folders and it doesn’t really give you a lot of detail. So that’s why we try to produce a health & safety file that acts as an index to that digital information, albeit that what we produce may end up as a PDF rather than a digital document, but we’re getting there slowly.

I haven’t come across a platform so far that actually ticks all of the boxes and covers all of the bases. I think there is a company that does a specific Reg 38 information, so you can compile all of your Reg 38 information digitally. And whether or not now someone is looking at it from a new legislation for fire safety, but I haven’t seen any thing that really captures everything in a digital platform.

RICHARD FREER We had a couple of years ago and four years ago 11 or 12 roundtable sessions on fire critical assets. We’ve got a review of those next week, 4 meetings. And one thing that came out was this argument about multi-platform, single platform and it was pretty much decided that you have a platform but it’s got to be totally interoperable. As Christopher said, technologically agnostic, so that basically whatever software people are using you can plug it in. So, I think from our point of view, our majority view certainly within BIM4Housing was total single platform doing absolutely everything. Would that sum that up. Alex?

ALEX OLDMAN Yeah, I think so. It’s the dream to have one solution that fits every need but the reality is we’re all have different perspectives on what information we expect to do the jobs that we want and the different jobs that we have. So what you need to do, if you’re looking at systems to do this is be choosing systems that integrate well, but do the job that they need to do very, very well. So there’s some high level requirements. I think we’ve probably got information requirements specific around data standards that are important, so I’d look for systems that can enforce those data standards.

I’d also look for workflow capabilities so that you can orchestrate and not just store information, but actually move it through a business process to support your business processes. And then the last thing I’d watch out for or make sure that you can do is you’ve got the ability to take the information out and about and update it. So you’ve got to be able to take it to site, you’ve got to have it there, what was it in the back office available on location. You’ve got to be able to interact with that information and update it. And I think validation is an important part of that as well.

When you’re working with mobile data collection the concern in the back office is how accurate is that, based on information that you’ve got. The records, the receipts you might have had, the information you know about. So that fire door we’re talking about, it says it’s this particular standard and spec, but then when the fire engineer goes out onsite and discovers that varies, who’s information do you trust? For me, in case any fire people, you’re the experts and you’ve had the most recent visits so that’s that. But you need a policy decision and a system to support that.

RICHARD FREER Also, in the technology environment now, and it’s not going to change, obsolescence is built in. You have to future proof because it’s OK if you’ve got all of your eggs in one basket and that company gets taken over, maybe the bit that you really like or that is crucial to your business, they stop doing. Supposing they go like Skype and say we;’re not doing that anymore, or nay number of other things. And that’s something that you have to future proof against because it can wreck your business.

BEX GIBSON Absolutely and that’s kind of where we’re coming from, it’s about how we as operators can ensure that what we’re doing, the checklist or whatever is a moveable feast. But we’re making it inline with industry, it’s not a software solution, it’s an operational solution. We’ve got one thing left on the agenda which is about warranties and post-installation inspections. Which is actually quite an interesting conversation that we had because some warranties, for example, it was a lighting installation or something that was in a building but that’s operational during the construction phase and the warranty runs out during the construction phase, so on handover you haven’t got a warranty on it. It was quite an interesting conversation that we had about that, it’s a little bit bonkers.

ALEX OLDMAN On the warranties point, I suppose that’s pretty much just a contractual matter. It’s a case of working with suppliers who understand that the component is going to last beyond the construction phase and that their obligation to that would continue throughout electrical supply at the most fundamental level is a really good example of that. So that’s the sort of contractual element.

PHIL CHRISTOPHER We’ve come across it where, I don’t do a lot of it but housing where they’re actually installing the white goods in kitchens and the like. And it’s a case of telling the contractor don’t register any of the equipment once you’ve installed it, it’s got to be left unregistered until we reach PC so that we don’t end up with any warranty issues. So that to me was the big thing, it’s the case of nothing gets registered until PC, so that there isn’t that risk of warranties running out.

ALEX OLDMAN My point was going to be around sectional completion, practical completion. So the matter there is if you’re working on a block of flats you might have white goods, for example, that get fitted 6 months before the building gets occupied. And some of those might just be installed a week before and the warranty period needs to run through there. Again, I think this is a standard thing, I think this is dealt with through good contract management processes and agreeing with all parties what’s going to be happening as you run through that. So I think that’s more of a legal treatment than an information requirement, but it does add a certain colour to the complexity of the processes of course.

DAVE WILLIAMS I will share with you an anecdote to finish off the meeting, which you might find funny, or we didn't at the time, but we can laugh about it now. So we've got a new build which one half of the building is private ownership and the other half of the building is ours, which is social housing. They shared the same AOV system and fire alarm system across both sides of the building. But what they didn't do is put in the isolation between both sides of the building. So we went to test the AOV system as you do, because it's got to be regularly tested. And we tested it and it shut down the lift in the private sector of the building with people in it.

So all of a sudden these people were stuck in a lift because we didn't realise that that was going to happen. And so we in fact we are in the process now of getting isolation put in so that we, and we've now got to do the next AOV test. And then we decided we were going to test the fire alarm system. So we triggered the fire alarm in one of the flats to see that it would all work and all light up on the panel. And guess what it did? It shut down the lift of the private side of the building and the fire alarm went off in the private side of the building as well. It probably came over under the idea that they thought they’d save money by not isolating the two sides of the building.

CHAT

Richard Hazard (Unverified)…. AGENDA FOR THE MEETING

1.Golden Thread Taskforce & Awareness
A new Golden Thread Taskforce has been formed to ensure industry-wide understanding of what’s needed for Golden Thread compliance across the asset lifecycle.

A “Golden Thread Awareness” badge will be introduced to help disseminate essential knowledge across the supply chain and internal teams.

The Advisory Group is now the Advisory and Consultancy Group, focusing on helping both clients and consultants deliver correct and compliant information from project inception to operation.

2. Early Engagement & Lifecycle Collaboration

Emphasis was placed on engaging consultants and operational teams early to avoid errors and inefficiencies post-handover.

Stakeholders agree that maintenance and operational input should be integrated from project start to ensure better building performance and compliance.

3. Industry Challenges & Gaps
Knowledge gaps exist, especially internationally, regarding post-Grenfell UK regulations.

Participants shared concerns about information overload, unclear client expectations, and the difficulty of achieving standardised, timely data submissions through all project stages.

4. Information Management & Tools
Ongoing efforts to streamline handover processes, integrate data, and standardise formats like COBie and Uniclass classifications.

Teams are struggling with fragmented tools and inconsistent digital handover data, often requiring manual intervention and additional resources to populate asset management systems.

5. Regulation 38 & Asset Data
Dave Williams demonstrated the complexity of compliance, citing the need to capture data on over 340 asset components.

Regulation 38 compliance requires detailed documentation of fire safety and asset components, often hindered by poor digital delivery or lack of structured COBie data.

6. International Perspectives
International attendees from Romania and France expressed interest in aligning with UK practices, but noted legislative and technical limitations in their home countries.

7. Warranties & Post-Installation Inspections

Delayed data handovers are affecting warranty validity and maintenance schedules.

Participants advocated for sending warranty details immediately upon commissioning, rather than bundling them with final handover, to enable timely action by operational teams.

Phil Christopher (External)…. I would be interested in joining the Golden Thread Taskforce. Thanks Phil

Academic Structured Summary (Bullet Point Format)

1. Golden Thread Taskforce & Awareness

• A new Golden Thread Taskforce has been formed to promote proactive industry engagement.
• Richard Freer: “The reason that we’re calling it a Taskforce is that it is actually very proactive… helping companies to find the best solutions for their own particular circumstances.”
• A ‘Golden Thread Awareness’ badge will be introduced to highlight competence and awareness of compliance requirements.
• Bex Gibson: “We’re the operations people so we need to have awareness of that Golden Thread as well.”

2. Early Engagement & Lifecycle Collaboration

• Focus on involving consultants and operational teams early to avoid post-handover inefficiencies.
• Jack White: highlighted difficulty in obtaining consistent information from developers, noting ‘we’re set up to not expect that.’
• Richard Hazard: called for a standard list of required information and consistent file layouts for easier retrieval.
• Phil Christopher: drew parallels with longstanding CDM Reg 38 issues, emphasising need for clear guidance and indexing.

3. Industry Challenges & Gaps

• Knowledge gaps remain, particularly around post-Grenfell regulatory changes and client expectations.
• Dave Williams: “Operational teams tend to get invited in at the last minute… leading to information overload and inefficiencies.”
• Proposal: Involve compliance specialists earlier in project lifecycles to prevent missing or unclear data.

4. Information Management & Tools

• Debate on COBie, Uniclass, and other standards: seen as useful but often inconsistent in practice.
• Jack White: criticised classification systems for confusing attributes and materials (‘when is a door not a door?’).
• Alex Oldman: supported holistic data approaches but noted COBie datasets rarely integrate smoothly with operational systems.
• Consensus: Systems should enforce standards, allow mobile updates, and support interoperability across platforms.

5. Regulation 38 & Asset Data

• Compliance requires capturing detailed data across hundreds of asset components, especially fire-related systems.
• Dave Williams: stressed value of pre-occupation stock condition surveys and fire risk assessments to verify documentation.
• Example: discrepancies between documented and installed fire doors highlighted need for rigorous ‘eyes-on’ checks.

6. International Perspectives

• Attendees from international contexts (e.g., digital twin providers, asset digitisation firms) highlighted opportunities for alignment.
• Christopher (View City): emphasised value of spatial digital twins for reducing errors and improving feasibility analysis.
• Basit Ibitoye: proposed attribute-rich classification models to enhance interoperability across disciplines.

7. Warranties & Post-Installation Inspections

• Concerns raised about warranties expiring before handover due to early installation.
• Phil Christopher: advised delaying product registration until practical completion to avoid warranty lapses.
• Alex Oldman: suggested contractual management as key to resolving warranty alignment with handovers.
• Dave Williams shared an anecdote: shared fire systems triggered malfunctions across private and social housing sections, highlighting poor design coordination.

8. Conclusion

• Meeting reinforced importance of early engagement, consistent asset information, robust Regulation 38 compliance, and interoperable digital systems.
• Action areas: define standardised operational checklists, align warranties with handover, and promote Golden Thread awareness across the sector.