BUSINESS CASE WORKSTREAM MEETING-2 04-07-2024
GEORGE I’ll just show you what’s in the poll. (shares screen). The purpose of this is to be able to say what was the significant take away from the last one? The obstacle in producing a business case. These are the ones that I think we are particularly bothered about, what are the benefits. if you could just answer a question there, what is the most important benefit you’re going to get from asset information? And what’s the most significant risk of not getting it? The reason we’re doing this is just to get people’s immediate feedback so that we can then build from that. So could everybody just go and put something in there.
MARC BRADFIELD I think probably the first thing to start with, George has just made me aware that there’s a number of people that didn’t attend the first session and maybe they could just make themselves known.
SUE NEWTON I’m from Halton Housing, I’m responsible for health & safety with building safety thrown in the mix as well, and I do some compliance areas like fire and gas, so most of the things that sort of go bang. I’m interested in this particular workstream because I’ve written the safety case for our high-rise block already, so it would be great to hear some feedback about what the Regulator is saying about other people and also to find ways of getting information better. I can give you an example of what I need and where I have needed it in the past. We’re currently just replacing some cladding in one of our blocks, independent living scheme. It’s wooden cladding, we found it ridiculously difficult to find out what type of wood it is so that we can specify the treatment that’s needed.
So, we decided to take it off and put some composite on there that doesn’t need any maintenance going forward. And can I find the information of what was behind the cladding anywhere? No. So anyway, when we did strip it off and to do a trial it was all flammable behind that, so it was flammable insulation, flammable membranes, obviously there was wooden batons as well. So now I’ve got that information it’s going to cost me twice as much to replace it. But there you go, that’s the sort of information that it would have been good to know before I was setting budgets, what was behind it so that I could then set up a realistic budget. And now I’ve had to go back to the board and ask for more money, which is not good at the beginning of the financial year. So, that’s the realities of why we need this information.
MARC BRADFIELD It’s a really important point, Sue, because my background before being with Bureau Veritas was 25 years in main contracting. And we had a lot of occasions where we had completed projects and clients would come back and ask us for the information, because they couldn’t find the information. And of course working for businesses that had bought businesses that had bought businesses etc, trying to get your hands on that information was often a problem. Which is worrying given the amount of information and data that we exchange in the built environment these days.
RYAN TENNYSON I’m from Scottish Futures Trust, my role is dealing with…information modelling, information management and supporting public sector clients in Scotland to be able to specify what they need in terms of project and asset information requirements for their projects and existing buildings, obviously extending through into operations as well. Something that might be of interest to the group, a few years ago we developed a working group called The Information Handover Working Group that was formed cross-sector with clients, pubic sector clients, a lot of local authorities, and also most of the big Tier 1s in the Uk which have a Scotland regional branch. And that was to develop and drive a consistent approach for digital handovers on projects, and that includes all of the health & safety O&M information. Our work continues to support public sector clients set up an environment at low cost, low skills, to be able to keep that information up-to-date using tools like Sharepoint, RBI, things like that.
MARC BRADFIELD It’s interesting because you mentioned the working group there. I always feel that on these calls, particularly on the last one it became apparent to me that the knowledge is here, we’ve got all the knowledge and there’s lots and lots of different working groups on all sorts of different subjects. I suppose what we’re about is trying to see how we can bring all of that knowledge together and unlock it.
CHRIS JEFFERS I’m a facilities management consultant, I lead the team at a company called Mott MacDonald and I’m a chartered surveyor by background, but I’ve been an FM consultant for 17-18 years now. The main area of interest here, and of course I don’t have to tell this audience, but in terms of the projects that Mott gets involved in, we’re pretty good and clients are getting much more switched on to some of the design & build aspects of the information that we’re all talking about here. I still have to shout very loudly to get heard in terms of how that information is then interpreted and then used, even when you’ve got end users and clients that are on the call and who are clearly concerned about how that information is being put together. As in this case, the business case is really there to push it over the line in terms of the emphasis of a common understanding of how that information is used. It’s just not there. So, really interested in how this work develops and also interested in how we can be a bit noisier in terms of what we’re trying to get across here. Because I think everybody is very aware of the need for it. But the expressing that need, defining that need, still needs a bit of work.
MARC BRADFIELD I think you make a point which highlights the flip-side of groups like this, that there is a danger when you have groups of like-minded people having those conversations, you become a bit of an echo chamber and you think that everybody understands everything. But you’re spot on right, it’s how do we break out of that and get that understanding and educate people and bring them beyond these sort of groups.
CAROLINE HAYHOE I was on the last call, but I joined a little bit later on because of another commitment. I’m an asset manager with Sodexo within the property professional services section which falls within government and agencies of Sodexo, so we look after a variety of estates. Personally I’ve worked on blue light services, commercial building merchants, schools, banks, so a wide variety of things including some PFI projects as well. For me wanting to be involved is on a twofold thing. A little bit of a personal development thing to be able to get involved and do this kind of thing and be involved in the conversation.
But also a bit of a personal mission in terms of when you win a new contract the fight and the initial 18 months of the contract is correcting the data that you get handed over, and it happens every time. So you spend 18 months correcting the data and then somebody else wins the contract and they probably feel like they need to correct that data. And there is this kind of rivalry within organisations, oh no, we’re not going to give you our best version, we’re going to give you our basic stuff. And I think it’s just a bit of a personal mission to break down that barrier and say, you know what, you may win the contract, cool great, but this is the best level of data that we’ve got and we’re going to give that to you because it belongs to the client, it’s not ours, it’s the client and it’s the safety and the wellbeing of the people that use that building that’s paramount, not our bruised ego because we didn’t win this contract.
MARC BRADFIELD I think that’s another important point, it's almost like the efficiency of collecting the data. People sometimes think is there an additional cost, in a way, of what we’re thinking about. But perhaps there isn’t because actually we’re not efficient in how we’re collecting data, if as a whole we were more efficient it wouldn’t be costing quite so much.
ANDREW PERRY I’m a technical manager with AMY? 12mins 36secs. I fulfil a number of roles working on the technical asset management side and I’m also an authorising engineer for a couple of disciplines. And George and I have been speaking for quite some time over the years on asset management and data. Just to echo Caroline’s thoughts is nobody appears to actually have an assured single version of the asset truth that’s had governance as some real, not science, but some rules and controls over it so that it’s relevant, up-to-date and it’s accurate. And it all boils down to if you don’t know what you’ve got, you don’t know what you’ve got to do and how do you budget.
MARC BRADFIELD Definitely, lots of nodding on that as well.
ANDREW PERRY I’ve been in the FM industry for more years that I care to remember, I’ve worked in a variety of positions, consultancy, contractor, project management across education, defence, healthcare and I’ve got a considerable amount of PFI experience as well from bidding to operational trouble shooting and asset management and SPV operations.
MARC BRADFIELD So, what I plan to do is…I’m going to try and recap on how we got to this point. Hopefully you can see the slides that I’ve very rapidly put together this morning. The Business Case Working Group, we started with a document which was very much food for thought just to get this thought process going. That was between myself and Richard Whittaker who is on leave today, but he is the co-leader of the group. Hopefully everybody on the call has received a copy of that. Then we had the inaugural meeting, I think Richard F described it as a brain hurricane of thoughts and ideas, and listening back to it and reading the highpoint notes I would recommend that, but I will try and distill that down into my kind of summary.
But I think today’s shorter meeting, what I’d like to do is bearing in mind that I suspect we probably won’t have the next meeting until September, is for people to think as we’re talking when I go through some of these themes, what would you like to take away as a bit of homework between now and the next meeting? It doesn’t have to be something huge, it could be just a few thoughts, but just try and pick up on the points and think what I can bring to them. Because we’ve got so many people from different areas of the industry, whether that be in terms of their roles or whether that be in terms of the sectors that they are currently or have been involved in.
Just a quick reminder that at the last one we talked about the fact that this is one of three workstreams, we also have digital records and interoperability. And I think we framed this very much as business case is very much about the why, whereas the digital records and the interoperability are very much about the how. And we’re trying to, it’s natural that in any one of those workstreams we start drifting between the hows and the whys, and we’ve got to explore at some point how we bring that together and leverage all of that knowledge. So, this is me trying to summarise the hour and a half worth of quite passionate discussion that went on at the previous meeting. I think it was four key points. It was about developing a cross-sector business case and the need for a business case that’s able to demonstrate the value and the benefits of better information management, and that links in with the poll as well that George and Richard were referring to.
So, it’s not just considering the benefits, you can look at it from the opposite direction of consider the risks of not having it. We set ourselves very importantly to consider across building sectors and not just residential. And we’ve explored, there are some difficulties on that and we’ll come back to that. Another thing that came across from all of the discussions, and forgive me for not quoting people because all of this came from individuals, but somebody mentioned actionable data. And that’s very much data that’s not just for the sake of it. Looking and thinking about the importance of translating some complex technical concepts into some form of plain language, and that links in with I guess trying to break outside of what I describe earlier as this echo-chamber, so we can communicate with everybody, and it resonates with asset owners, managers, whoever.
The third thing that came across was overcoming the adoption challenges. The challenges of getting organisations to actually adopt this and also to consider utilising new technologies as a part of that discussion as well. And it’s very much about different ways of working, or perhaps actually refinement of the way of working. The fourth was a discussion about holistic approach to building types and again it links in with that cross-sector approach, rather than focusing very much on specifics. And there was some discussion about the common challenges, what’s that commonality for asset managers across those different sectors. I think on the last one very much was trying to keep it at the highest possible level so we could still be looking at that why question, as opposed to the how.
I won’t go into each of these but I’ll try to phrase them, this is a breakdown of the thoughts that came out from everybody. In terms of the first theme, the cross-sector business case, we questioned whether we actually have a focus on local authorities, NHS Trusts, schools etc and universities, so that we drop down a level and we actually have something more tangible to focus on. George, I know you made some comments on the email that I sent originally, so if there is anything your red comments that you want to add in as I go, because I haven’t digested those. We talked about how could we break the ultimate business case down, and there was two different ways that came across in terms of do we break it down into compliance must-haves, how the building is used in terms of occupation technology and also how green it is. And information management, not having the right information and the cost and risk of that.
Or, could it be looking at the cost of having the right information, and indeed the risk of not having the right information, and how that information relates to building performance. In terms of actionable data, not just data for the sake of it, question whether people are spending money on collecting the wrong data, which is something that was mentioned earlier. And it’s money that could actually be spent on collecting the right data and I guess in the right way in the most efficient way. There was a lot of conversation about how will we translate from the world of COBie and acronyms, which I think whenever you introduce the BIM into something is something where it descends into. And frankly there will be people that is almost meaningless and very difficult when you talk in a sea of acronyms to them to get them to understand.
So, is it something that we should look at in terms of a plain language version of the EIRs? So we’re translating every concept with that into something that actually is something that can be digested by those beyond this form of group. Something, this was actually probably a thought of my own reading through this, do we think as part of this business case of the need for an information requirement audit? How many times have we seen requirements that probably just aren’t necessary, just aren’t used, probably people don’t understand why they’re being gathered, but it becomes virtually a contractural box ticking exercise. So do we need to think about how we take it right back to the concept stage and actually people need to work and look at what their actual requirements are to see those benefits.
Linked in with that somebody mentioned the concept of it would be great if we could fingerprint data, so we could actually track data all of the way through some historic schemes to actually understand, well, this was asked at this concept stage, this is what arrived at the end of the project, and this is how little (or how much) it’s been used. It would be fascinating to be able to see that, are we really getting that value. We talked about breaking this actionable data down into, as Adina said the concept of the safer, smarter and greener building. There was also the discussion over how data could be leveraged to reduce insurance premiums and this was revolving a lot around the occupation technology and I think very much aligned with how the insurance industry uses smart apps for driving. Which is actually something that my business uses as well with all of our people that have driving as part of their role.
Overcoming adoption challenges, how do we educate those? We’ve already mentioned that in terms of breaking it down into a simpler language away from COBie, away from acronyms and all of the numerous standards that people quote that are in the know. How can everyone on a business be educated to understand what information is important to the asset owner? How can we have a transparent policy? Again, links back to what we said before, we talked about decision makers, the actual decision makers, the people that are making the decisions on the asset manager’s budgets, essentially. Do they really know what is actually important to them? Considering as part of the business case how we demonstrate a tangible return on investment to the people that make those decisions. How to unlock the benefits of using information that’s gathered to facilitate occupation technology. So, that’s kind of leading on to the use of that data.
And somebody made the point about recognising that the business case is not just about investment in technology, it’s about investment in people as well. Whether that be people that are within the existing teams or actually new people come onboard. And there was a point made about breaking away from the world of, which often now becomes the focus in terms of safety and compliance. Do investors yet place enough value on decarbonisation to actually justify costs? I know it comes up in a lot of briefs, but are the people that are holding the purse strings really placing the necessary value on that. And the final part before I open this up into people’s thoughts, that holistic approach to building types. And again, that’s the universal common challenges that people are facing and this is almost the perfect forum to be able to start to understand those.
And someone said having a clear view of their assets so that they can work out what maintenance they have to do, so that they can validate compliance issues and consider budgets for 5, 10, 15, 20 years plus, whatever. Linked in with the need to drive competence and that’s relevant to everything that we’re doing, if it’s controllable under building regs the competencies of the team in terms of the new duty holders and principal designer etc. Competencies is a big thing, how do we link that in with our business case? And there was a final point that we also need to consider that we’re talking about new buildings, buildings in concept, buildings that might be two weeks old with far too much data and how you unpick that. And then right through to buildings that are beyond 50 years old which have no data whatsoever. So that is my summary of what’s happened in the previous meeting. That was an interesting exercise, and to some extent it taught me the value of Ai because that did have a little bit of a helping hand in summarising this.
I guess now to open this up and to put everybody on the spot, initial reflections as to the direction that we take, and indeed where you think you might be able to bring something to this and take something away.
ANDREW PERRY I think in terms of where do we go, I think as part of the business case if we get people to focus on the value of having good and accurate data on the business and for business risks associated with not having the good quality data to drive and support the processes that protect the business from risk, and enable business critical activities. So if we look at business risk in all its aspects and how the asset, the built environment, supports a business critical operations. You could say that if you’re a merchant banker your dealing floor, all that happens with the dealing floor. If you are health care, f you’ve on an acute hospital with a busy A&E then obviously you’re ability to deliver health care services, so your operating theatres, your intensive care units. If you’re in industry and possibly you’ve got environmental risks associated with your core business, so anything that protects your core business from environmental risk, it could be to have lots of oil petroleum products, anything associated with that. Take an airfield or a jet fuel installation, if you don’t know what you’ve got and the condition of it and what you should be doing to protect yourself from risk, which can be legisla…statutory, or indeed operational business continuity, it’s risk and risk takes lots of forms. it could be reputation, loss of revenue, it all boils down to knowing what you’ve got, what condition is it in, what do I need to keep the business operational. Profitable and safe. Not that those factors are taken in any preference.
MARC BRADFIELD Absolutely, and don’t worry, I struggle with the word legisla…which is actually quite difficult in the job that I do. Just rolling forward and we start bringing this into something that becomes tangible as a business case, what’s your thought in terms of who are we talking to? Who are we presenting that business case to? Who are we trying to get to within organisations?
ANDREW PERRY We need to be aiming at the right level and I think we’ve got to be aiming at director and possibly one level up and one level down. People that can influence and put the business case, and also there’s people that can understand the business case. We need to couch our business cases in a language that the people that hold the budgets and can control the direction understand and can appreciate. I think a lot of this stuff is associated with CIBSE Guide M, and aiming at the right people. Now, if we can put it in a context, and I can talk freely about this particular instance because it’s in the public domain. I don’t know if anyone is aware of the confined space incident that happened at Kettering Hospital in 2021 or 2022.
It hit the courts last year, the Trust estate, not an outsourced contractor, sent somebody into a deep drain without the necessary safe system of work permit precautions, training, whatever. And the guy collapsed with hydrogen sulphide poisoning and suffered life changing injuries due to hydrogen sulphide inhalation for a sustained period. Last year the Trust were fined £460,000 following HSE prosecution. The civil case from the inured party has yet to come through, I would estimate that being somewhere in the order of £5-8 million. If you look at can the Trust afford £460,000, where is that £5 million coming from? Who’s going to be accountable? Is it going to be the Trust Chief Exec? Is it going to be the Director of Estates? Or is it going to be the maintenance hard FM technical services Estates Operations Manager?
MARC BRADFIELD It’s interesting because we’re talked about who we’re trying to get to, and depending on who you’re talking to there is that use of different language. And I think possibly further up the hierarchy you go, that’s where it needs to get more plain English and getting away from…but you’re actually bringing in another language, in a way, that’s used , we need to talk about that scenario and the numbers involved for an organisation. That will certainly focus the minds of those further up the hierarchy.
ANDREW PERRY Who in the Estates Department knew that they had a deep drain? Who knew that deep drain equals confined space? Equals hazardous area, equals risk. It comes down to competency of knowing what we’ve got.
SUE NEWTON On the same themes, it’s who owns the data. In my organisation we’ve got and asset manager who is more interested in the lifecycle of the data, he wants to know how long the building can last for or how, or how long the components last for before they need to be replaced. Then we’ve got the building safety which is like me, we want to know how we can make that building safer and what components that we can use to make it safer. Then we’ve got people like the maintenance managers who want to maintain that building. And so they might look at a component and put a cyclical maintenance date against it. So they’ve got all of this information, the IT managers are the ones that need to find the solutions so that we can hold the data, but none of them have the ability to be able to make decisions about buying the systems or why we need them.
Only the directors have the ability to be able to put the funds in place to do what we need to do with all of that data and to hold that data. So, it is a very difficult situation because you need to have someone who is passionate to drive it forward that might sit in one of those areas, but are able to crossover the different teams. And that has to be your head of whoever it is that assets sit under, probably, or your director of homes or the director of neighbourhoods. It crosses over so many different areas, it’s so difficult to know who’s going to be responsible for that data. And I think we need to get that sorted first, in residential anyway.
MARC BRADFIELD It’s interesting, you could almost treat this group as an example. Everybody here has information, data and knowledge that we all don’t know. I don’t know what information that everybody else has, but there’s things there of use, how do you bring all of that knowledge together?
GEORGE One way of communicating that has just been beautifully given there by Andrew and that is scenarios and examples because I think that’s the thing that brings it to life for most people. And one question that I’ve just put in the chat, if that was a criminal prosecution, Andrew, then the insurers wouldn’t cover them for that, i would think. So the Trust would have to cover the cost of whatever that penalty was.
ANDREW PERRY Yes, that was the HSE criminal prosecution. The civil claim for compensation has yet to come to light.
GEORGE I question whether the Trust’s insurers would cover them.
ANDREW PERRY Certainly if it was a commercial company, no. And you can’t write it if against tax if you’re a commercial private sector, it has to come off your P&L.
MARC BRADFIELD I wonder if there is a thought there for everybody between now and the next meeting to think about scenarios and examples that we can use as part of that, certainly ones that we can deal with in the public domain, as such. I’m sure if we put our brains together there is probably a whole host of those and we can bring those together.
ANTHONY HARTE I think just echoing what George has said, my comments were around the scenarios and I think it was Caroline earlier that said that they had a significant resource intensive programme to capture data of the external facade etc. So there is a real scenario there in terms of hours of personnel required to capture that data when they were doing the cladding on that particular building. And that’s a really good idea of capturing that use case and the cost to do that. There is a lot of wastage in terms of the data we capture whereby it is thrown away and resurveyed by asset managers when they onboard a building. So, there is a cost of 2 weeks for on-boarding a building if it is 2 weeks, I don’t know.
There is a cost there in terms of resource to go in and resurvey a building, so that’s another scenario, what is the cost to an estates team to go into a building and resurvey it, even though they’ve been given data that they may not trust. So scenarios is a really good one. One last thing on that is just making sure that our business case is not just about asset management and good asset management. It’s BIM for asset management, I think is the title, so we all know there is a good case for business case studies on asset management and those exist. They’ve been done through the asset management sector many times. So, bringing it back on subject, this is BIM for asset management.
GEORGE Yeah, it’s about BIM as in Better Information Management, rather than 3D modelling. So, 3D modelling is an important perspective on it, but that’s what we’re trying to engage with the asset managers. And just building on what Anthony was saying there, one of the challenges is that when you send somebody in to do a physical survey, if you send a surveyor, even a really expert mechanical surveyor, into a plant room and then you send another one in a month later, they’ll come out with different figures. And part of that comes from their experience and how they’re interpreting things. And I think, what an asset is, for example, is something that is discussed at length. And also if you’ve got somebody who is an M&E specialist, they may have a mechanical bias or an electrical bias, and you can’t afford to necessarily send both in there.
So, that’s one of the challenges, having a reliable baseline to work from is particularly critical. We’re already picking that up from the digital records workstream that Adina is leading, and being able to actually have a reliable baseline to work from is really critical. Otherwise the client is paying for things to be maintained that may not even be there, or they are not paying for things to be maintained that are there and therefore they don’t get maintained because nobody knows. A classic is fire dampers, in many cases on an existing building nobody has got any idea where the fire dampers are, unless the records are right.
ANDREW PERRY Just to add to what George’s comment on the level of survey and asset detail, how far do you take it. It depends on what the business needs are, on what the level of complexity and types of buildings that you’ve got and also on the contracting conditions and the commercial risks to your service provider or your internal organisation. In terms of cash flows and performance and impact on core critical business. It’s an instance specific, so if you look at the various levels of information and particularly if you look at asset management. Yes, you’ve got a building, yes, you’ve got a heating system, do you want to break that down into the capital assets, you’ve got a boiler, you’ve got pumps. If you’ve got a large boiler, you might have a full Straft? 45mins 30secs pressure jet burner, those are going to be capital assets in their own right. Have you got a district heating scheme?
It’s all dependent on the specific case and depending on how much granularity of system performance that you are looking at. If you’ve got a large office building with multiple field sensors fire alarm, or emergency lights, you need to understand when were they fitted, what’s the life span? How many are failing? Are we looking at 5 or 10% if emergency battery units failing? Are we approaching the failure zone? Are we starting to see the failure rate increase? Do we need to budget to replace en masse? Because you’re looking at significant chunks of money, but you’re also looking at potential impact on building users, depending on the building design. You’ve got fancy atriums and you’ve got to scaffold them out, or you’ve got to get cherry pickers in, is it a 24/7 operation? Or can you actually say, right, the reception is closed this weekend, if you want to come in use the backdoor.
We talk about interrogating reviewing designs to look at things like this, but to be honest, Anthony, in your experience how many building owners developers actually consider these things before they and it over to their outsourced FM contractor? How many FM contractors have got the spare capacity and the expertise to go and look at a building and go, well, that’s going to be tricky. If we look at PFIs, when you’re bidding a PFI looking at it, which organisations have got the resource and the ability to stand the cost of the resource to make sure that the building that the design and construction teams want to give them, not that that may actually represent what the best solution is, who’s got that capability? And how do we get people to understand the link between CapEx and OpEx? And impact on business.
MARC BRADFIELD To me, if it’s not under a subject of compliance and statutory compliance, it always needs to come back to the money, the pounds and pence, in terms of that business case as such.
WILLIAM BORTHEN I’m following on from what Andrew was saying there and `i think it relates to the level of information need and the challenge that people find about how to specify what they actually want. And I think someone has put on the chat about the cost of gathering information that’s possibly never going to be used and having to maintain that data, which is really difficult. You kind of almost cast the die and put a millstone around your neck, having to maintain that data for the longevity of that building. If you specify a high level of information need, and i guess people like Ryan and Chris are working with clients to help them convert what they’re asking for into what they’ve actually going to need and how they operate their buildings.
And they are two separate things, I think, there’s a lot of information that comes from the construction project and then operationally you can run buildings with minimal data quite basic data, but then someone asks you a question like Sue said earlier about what’s the insulation behind that cladding. And if you can’t access that data then you’re stuck. So, I think there needs to be a funnel of that construction information down into operational information in a way that people can operate buildings that are new and have got lots of information with buildings that are existing and probably don’t have as much information. And a lot of asset managers struggle with that kind of funnelling of information.
MARC BRADFIELD For those that are at the operational phase and the asset management side of it, is anybody willing to share how much, in realty, input do you have at the earlier stage of a project? And I guess also how much of what your thoughts and recommendations where you are involved does it…
ANDREW PERRY In a previous life in the PFI environment the organisation that I worked for, we took a stake at consortium level as the FM provider, so we actually bid at consulting level even though people thought we were just the FM Co. WE weren’t, we were actually stakeholders, which came as a bit of a surprise to some of the design and construction teams when ti was time for Bob the Builder. And we actually sort of took a very close interest in the quality of the design and how it impacted on our ability to manage the risk of the payment? 52mins 29secs performance for a PFI. so, looking in terms of resilience, can we get into these spaces? How do we see what’s going on? Have we got the right sort of OEM manufacturers? Is someone trying to foist a closed protocol on us because they bought it cheap or the owed somebody a deal from the last big project.
We’d monitor construction, so having gone all of the way through the bid we’d stay onboard and we’d monitor construction. Paying regular visits to site questioning snd probing and asking, well, how do I get to that? Are you sure this is the right way? Should that be sealed off? And if you like there’s one particular building in the outskirts of Cheltenham that’s got a circular shape to it, and a team of three of us. A mechanical and electrical engineers, and a building construction design manager, we all worked for the FM Co, but we sort of put our consulting hats on. So over the three years of construction every quarter we would spend a week going round the construction site and I think we took something like 5,000 photographs. So, after each visit we’d do a report and we’d present it to the consortium investment board directors to actually look at these are the risks and these who are who the risks sit with.
Because in terms of the lifecycle fund different parts of the consortium bore different specified risks, looking at that availability. But, that costs, and not every FM Co had the luxury of that resource and having that time and capability.
GEORGE What Andrew was just saying there, one of the things that we’re doing some work on at the moment is government soft landings. And I think that has got some mechanism to help with it, if it works properly. The other thing, what we discussed last week in terms of simplifying EIRs, there’s something called plain language questions that were introduced to government soft landings. Which is an attempt to get people to engage more effectively. I’m not sure it was fully understood, and I think there is still a little bit more work to do around that, but government soft landings provides us with a framework to do exactly what Andrew is talking about there.
SUE NEWTON I think in the past development used to be quite close knit and stayed away from operational side of the business or the way round, so we didn’t have much to do with development. We are trying to build relationships now with them where we have regular meetings about the developments that they’ve got onsite, or coming on-stream, and we also go out onsite and look at the projects, as Andrew says, during the processes of the build and at soft landing stage. Os I think the key is to get into development at the earliest possible stage, so that’s what we’re trying to do, and also look at the components that have been put in there and have standard specifications and stuff like that. So that we have a Vaillant boiler, for example, so that when we bring it in to operation we’ve got all of the parts and everything, we've not got 6 different boilers out there in our stock that we have to hold stocks on. So, we are trying to do things like that, but it is difficult when you get a Section 106 which is an off the shelf building that’s built with whatever the builder wants to put in it, basically.
CHRIS JEFFERS I was going to mention soft landings, it does cover it, but it’s only if the client actually asks for it. I think there’s so much to unpack in what we’ve discussed, but for me overarching is the fact that if we’re talking about the business case then that’s the persuasive arguments to convince someone to spend the money and to actually follow a particular process. And it’s very easy to get down to the detail of how things are done and what information is required. Effectively, the people who make those decisions don’t care, they just need to know whether they are being persuaded in terms of those high level arguments, risk, health & safety etc.
Another quick thing to get across is I’ve done soft landings for years, I’ve done a lot of that kind of help in terms of operational readiness and transition to operations. Effectively behaviours are controlled and structured around contracts, it’s whatever is in the contract. We need to get the task of what we want into the contract so that the client has leverage over whoever is producing this information and this data. So it’s very clear about what they have to produce and when they have to produce it. And there are so many contracts and agreements working on now, if I’m honest, that have nothing in there about that…it’s a very high level, but in terms of specific detail, it’s just not there. So we have to get better at that.
RYAN TENNYSON On your last point, Chris, I totally agree with the latter point around empowering clients to be able to ask for that contractual, to know that they have access to that data and the good quality data that they need if the contract expires and they’re going out to tender again. And having worked with lots of clients and local authorities, predominantly within Scotland, some points that have been raised already that I would echo with are focus on existing buildings is fundamental, as opposed to just thinking about data for new buildings. How that data is captured, what data they need to own and what data an FM contractor might own temporarily and keep up-to-date on their behalf and how that’s all set out and managed at an organisational level. So that’s just a few points.
MARC BRADFIELD I don’t think that now we’re going to agree entirely on the next actions, but I’m wondering if perhaps what we say is now that everybody has sat and listened to everything, and going back to my original point of between now and the next meeting, probably in September, is there particular aspects that people in the group would like to pick up so that by the time we get to that next meeting we are moving forward. And I’m wondering perhaps over the course of the next couple of days we could get those out over email, just people’s initial thoughts, I’d like to take a look at this, and then we can work towards that. George, are you happy with that?
GEORGE Absolutely, could I also just make a suggestion that even the people that attended the meeting a couple of weeks ago, I think it would be useful for you to listen to the recording again. And certainly the people that weren’t involved in that, please listen to it. The trick I use, I listen to it at 1 1/2 times the speed. They’re on Youtube, so it’s very easy to do and you can pick up the whole thing. The reason I’m saying that is that there was a lot that we did last week in terms fo trying to organise how we were going to structure this which Marc has done a great job in trying to summarise, but if you understand why we were saying it, in terms of business case and the different elements, that’s a useful thing to do.
MARC BRADFIELD Absolutely, I think we’ve got a huge opportunity here with the knowledge that’s essentially sitting around the virtual table, it’s just how we reign it in. And that’s going to be the tricky bit, but there is something we can really make of this. I really appreciate everybody joining today and look forward to hearing thoughts and us reconvening, having hopefully made a little bit more of a move forward.
GEORGE If, for example, once you’ve listened to the videos, if you’ve got any comments or any thoughts from today that you want to fire through to us, we’ll take them and summarise them so that when we restart in September we’ve not lost the momentum for that. So, if you’ve got some ideas and thoughts then please jot them down in an email and send them through to Richard and we’ll get those organised.
CHAT
Chris Jeffers (External)11:34 am
The audience is the KEY issue here
Cliff Kneale (External)11:36 am
I like the approach of aiming the business case at director level and one level and one level down as this drives conversation and traction.
Chris Jeffers (External)11:36 am
What we are talking about here gets little "air time" in the 5 stage business case model for public sector projects. You have to KNOW about it, to blend it in to strategic and/or commercial sections...
George Stevenson (External)11:39 am
Andrew Perry, was that a criminal prosection. In which case their insurers wouldnt cover the fine
William Borthen (External)11:41 am
Agreed Sue, the adoption of BIM is a strategic decision, and needs senior buy-in. Otherwise you end up with no BIM or BIM models that are never maintained.
Andrew Perry (External)11:41 am
Yes - Criminal by HSE
Chris Jeffers (External)11:43 am
Do we need to structure the business case (whatever form that takes) in terms of key issues - health and safety, risk, performance, value etc...? as these apply cross sector...
Andrew Perry (External)11:44 am
Building Asset Survey - approx £1 -£1.50 sq m GIFA depending on scale, no of sites and level of survey- non-intrusive / semi-intrusive /
Level of asset detail depends on: business needs- system type- contracting conditions
Sue Newton (External)11:48 am
We know what the legal requirements are for what needs servicing and/or inspection, i.e doors, electrical installation.
Cliff Kneale (External)11:49 am
It is important to consider the cost of gathering the wrong information for example as-built drawings that are now out of date and the further cost of then building an information model based on this out of date information. Maybe better to carryout a as existing site survey of what is actually there.
Sue Newton (External)11:49 am
We can use sensors and so on to check if something is starting to go wrong as well - surely we should be more proactive but most companies don't know how to monitor and use BMS systems
Adina Poncis (External)11:50 am
Sounds like most problems usually arise from the interface between where the responsibility of a party ends and another party begins.
Andrew Perry (External)11:53 am
Sue Newton- there are some great applications out there and the industry are "waking up" to how best to use data to drive change - CIBSE FM - Closing the Loop. Unfortunately there are few business caste studies to influence senior stakeholders - for housing heating systems have a look at the Vericon website
Andrew Perry (External)11:58 am
What level of BIM does GSL require ? Scope of the EIR needs to support the end objective - will level 2- 3 do this ?
Adina Poncis (External)11:59 am
Soft landing strategies bring early engagement between the design, construction and management teams
Andrew Perry (External)12:00 pm
GSL -OK if the Management team include some operational FM resource