DIGITAL HANDOVER WORKSTREAM MEETING 03-04-2025
GEORGE STEVENSON We’ve been continuing our conversations with the HSE, we had one earlier this week, so that’s progressing well. We’ve got support from them for the approach that we’re taking and indeed they’re contributing as well. I’m just going to open up with what we’re trying to achieve and I’m going to give some examples. One of the lessons we’ve learned over the last couple of years is that different people within organisations want different information for different purposes. And it’s therefore important that the handover information includes what’s needed for people that are managing small works, compliance, asset teams and also building safety managers. And they need to be able to navigate that information easily and also keep it up-to-date.
This is some examples of projects that we’ve done over the last year or so where we’ve actually looked at the handover information, and this is one for fire stopping. So, we opened up the O&Ms that were provided and if you actually look at them that fire stopping drawing is actually, in my view, useless, because all of the…this is a PDF and it’s been screen-shotted and then just put in as the O&M manual as the fire stopping information. And when we went back to the contractor and challenged that they said well, the client signed it off. And when we then checked, it wasn’t the client that signed it off, it was the employer’s agent.
And the employer’s agent, when we asked them they said well, we received a drawing, we didn’t look at it. It’s not within our scope to actually look at them and check them, which was a big surprise to the landlord. So, in this particular case what we’ve done is, in a sort of very systematic way, gone through and identified for this particular development what’s been provided. So, you see at the beginning there’s lots of greens there, but you would expect that for building control. But then we start to see more detail coming in here and a lot of reds come up. And then looking at that, the reds plus some sort of qualification. And this is the Regulation 38 information, as it was at that time during the first audit, it’s a lot better than this now.
Because this gave the fire safety team within the landlords the opportunity to actually go and track it down, but this is the sort of thing that we’re finding. And this is a recent one that we’ve been doing where you’ll see the location of the fire and smoke dampers is merely given as internal. This is in the fire safety manual. And the same with the fire stopping, all levels. Now, you can drill into the O&Ms and track through to try and find the information, but again it’s not very clear. And certainly for a CAFM system, if you’re taking the information and wanting to put in where the inspections are going to be carried out you need to know where they are as a space reference, which we don’t think is unreasonable.
In particular for Regulation 38, it actually explicitly states that you should have an as-built plan of the building showing where all of the smoke detector heads are and where the fire dampers and isolating valves and things like that are. So, that’s something that we think is reasonable. The legislation now requires landlords to confirm that they’ve actually received that information. Now, again, I can’t see how they can easily do that with the quality of handover information that we’ve been receiving. And it’s also now legally required that the supply chain has got to provide that information.
So, what we’ve tried to do is identify what are the key elements or key items that are mentioned in Regulation 38 and what information do we need as a fundamental? So, we think that you need the asset type name, the individual asset, so not just the type but the individual asset and the unique reference for it. You need its location. If it’s part of a system, what system reference it is. The product reference and any data sheets. The installers name, if it’s been commissioned the commissioner’s name. And also if it’s been inspected and then the means for ongoing maintenance activity to be tracked. So, what we’ve got therefore is the 16 or so safety critical assets that are specifically named in Regulation 38. And I think this list here should be easily completed. So, I think that’s a baseline that we ought to be working to.
The other aspect of that though, it’s not just the individual assets, it’s also looking at what those assets are doing. And the Golden Thread guidance that we contributed to a couple of years ago, they’ve made it very clear that parts of the building and the components, we need to be looking at how things work together. So the example that you’ve seen me do probably many times, a fire breaks out in a kitchen, we’ve got to protect against smoke getting into the common areas where people are trying to escape. How do we do that? Well, just having fantastic fire doors isn’t going to do the job if the penetration seals aren’t working. So we need to look at compartmentation as a system. Similarly, you’ve got smoke control detection systems and all of these need to be able to work together.
And also therefore, if you’ve got the information about a particular asset, let’s say a door, you need to know the information about that door and the manufacturers and the detail. But you also need to know where that door is in the building and what spaces is it protecting because otherwise you can’t do your planning properly. And then when, for example, you’ve got people coming along and doing inspections they may be using a range of different software applications to do that, but they all need to be referencing back to the same ID. So here’s a good example, we’ve got quite a complex drawing there. It’s complex for a lay person like me, but it’s giving the indication of where the fire walls are.
If you combine that with the fire doors, as long as you’ve got a proper schedule of where those fire doors are and what spaces they’re protecting, then you can create something simple, like this. That therefore you’ve got a simple plan that’s showing where the 60-minute compartments are and where the 120-minute walls are. And then the doors and other assets that are protecting them. So, we think that’s the way forward really and also to use 360 photographs. 360 photographs at handover mean that you’ve got something that makes it a lot easier for you to check and verify that information has actually been provided.
So, one of the aspects that we’re trying to work to is we’ve been working with the HSE on, and a number of people that are on this call as well. Standardising the way the O&M manuals are structured, irrespective of where they come from. They can then come through into a standardised folder structure that can have additional search information assigned to it, so that when you’re then looking for things you don’t need to know which folder it was in or which supply chain member actually provided it. It can be tagged with asset data or with search data and attributes to make them easily found. And the methodology of doing that means that we can then have this situation where you’ve got spaces.
And then with the documents actually tied back to the spaces, so that you can relate the documents that are in the health & safety file and the O&M with the elements that are in the building. And then also make it possible for the manufacturers to provide and keep up-to-date the information that they’ve got about that particular product. i’m going to hand over to Paul.
PAUL OAKLEY (shares screen). This is a typical file produced using the BS 1192 or the ISO 19650 naming conventions where you’ve got a project number, the designer or the originator. Then there’s a reference code in terms of the volumes, the levels, the type of drawing is A for architects and then the number. If you try and go into the properties and look for metadata about actually there’s nothing there in terms, it’s just using that metadata there. Now, it’s OK if you know how to decompose that, which people working through the design stages know that DAA happens to be Darling Associates Architects. And DR is for drawing and A is for architect. But a lot of the other stuff will probably be lost, particularly the people on the O&M side of stuff.
Now, if we go back to 2004, ISO 72000 which was based on an original BS before that. That goes into the details of standardised metadata, generally it used to be on title blocks and CAD files and that. But basic things like there should be metadata on a file relating to the title, supplementary title and other information about it. And this is OK if stuff is in the CDE because quite often when they upload the…but with the AutoCAD files these sort of things will be automatically sucked out of the, attributes from the title block are automatically populated. But now since I’ve moved to Revit this sort of stuff seems to have got lost. So, we really need to go back to those requirements, standardising some of these attributes.
And at least getting things like the document and the title, the supplementary title, who’s produced it, the name of it and those sorts of things. To make sure that we’ve got the correct metadata when we’re trying to put them into solutions which are holding the O&Ms. George mentioned that we’d also started going through the standardised folder structure on this. And then out of that we then realised in terms of a lot of the other stuff that was being asked for, actually that could be additional attributes that should be associated with a document. George had an example where there was lots of different types of fire specific requirements that were identified. So, it’s how we could basically take that onboard and add those things as attributes.
Because if you’re looking at a folder structure, there may be some fire related stuff that’s actually in the architect’s as well as within the mechanical or whoever’s produced it. So, it might be in their folders, we actually want to search on some particular attributes across a series of documents to find the things that you’re looking for.So, having a way of standardising those attributes was one of the things that we were discussing yesterday in terms of how we should do that.So really what’s people’s feedback on those, what sort of attributes should we require and how we’re going to define those.
GEORGE STEVENSON Just to provide some sort of context for that. The reasons we’re asking the question, and there’s a number of people on the call here who probably have tried to find things in O&Ms. One of the challenges that we’ve got is that O&Ms are compiled, typically, by contractors asking their work package providers to provide the information, which is obviously a logical thing to do. The problem is if you are a person that’s actually using the building and running the building, how would you know which work package a particular asset type of system was provided in? It’s a nightmare.
So therefore, what we’re trying to do is make it easy for people that are not familiar with the project itself, particularly in maybe 5 years time when everybody has forgotten, how do we find the information about where the fire dampers are, for example? What’s your experience of being able to find things in O&Ms? And do you think that’s something that we ought to be addressing?
CHRIS MILLING To me, all of this seems like paper pushing. I always think it seems like paper pushing because you’re asking for the diagrams and that, and you’ll put them in a system of records somewhere. i put in the chat, I used to look at handover sheets at L&Q when I worked there and they’d get things like these are the lifts, these are the systems. But essentially, they’d get this document and they’d put the documents they needed into Keystone. So you’re not actually using any of this data or attributes, you’re getting a flat copy of something. You’re perhaps using file naming conventions, so you’ve got a rough idea. it may or may not bring extra better data in.
You might get spreadsheets which have got a lot of data in but, again, they’ll be put in a system of record and you’re not actually using the data which is in there anyhow. So, I don’t know what organisations use to keep that data so that if there are any maintenance activities or stuff that you need to look at that you can actually access it directly, as opposed to going away and looking at a document which always seems to be a stumbling block, for me. I just don’t get it, so that’s my bit.
ADEY BADMOS I think standardising would be really helpful because it just tends to be a waste of time to date because they never have the information. They keep coming back, they go back to development because I work in development, and they keep coming back and asking the same questions. And whatever manual you give them, whether that’s good enough or not, I don’t think it’s good enough anyway, they never find anything in that manual, to be honest. So, this is really, really going to be helpful, it’s going to save a lot of time and it’s going to save money going forward. If you ask me, what we have to date it’s not worth the paper that it’s written on.
The contractors just put this together as quickly as they can, as you rightly said. The employer’s agents as well don’t do their due diligence, they just collect it and they just pass it on. So really it’s paper pushing, it’s not working, let’s just put it that way.
PIERRE VENTER One of the first things is about we’re actually in a digital world, we’re talking about data. And the data starts at inception, the originators, the naming, the standards like Adey is saying, that’s my experience of global projects in the Middle East, exactly that. No standardisation, or a standardised system that is not followed. And the definition of what is a handover, exactly like all of the forms that we’ve just been looking at from Paul, those become the Bible. That becomes the goto place. I’m just going to show something (Pierre holds up a book on screen). This little purple book, it’s gotta to change to a blue book shortly, is the way.
It’s a digital record that has me in a unique identifier. And what it is is that if you scan that, all of the data becomes available. That unique number, that unique reference, we spoke about it yesterday, it was about elements, components and assemblies. And our whole building is made up of those three things. And the granular level increases, but there’s always the assembly has a reference, the components have a reference and the elements can have a reference. Because that’s what the design team are putting in. As you pass this information over, the handover says I’m handing you, and here’s the checklist, all of the things I’m handing over.
So the definition, from the beginning of Stage 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, is that you can define 7 parameters which clearly identify the item at Work Stage 1 or 2. And it can increment so that those are easily identifiable. But in a digital world, everything needs to be connected. Now comes the problem. One of those is that platform can manage that. And equally, what you’re handing over can then be a digital checklist. And this is the part I think that’s happening, is that all of these documents when we go to the digital product passport, when we do all of these various things we will see the benefits and convert it into money and the client will want that money back. However, that’s my opinion, so that’s the start of it.
GEORGE STEVENSON I think you’re absolutely right in your aspiration, I’ve been pursuing that for many years as well. The challenge is, where we are with the industry as it is and we need to be able to address the fact that the expertise and the competence of the industry has got some way to go. Particularly in some of the areas where the handover information, the asset information, is being delivered by a specialist subcontractors who aren’t that engaged in the BIM process. So, i think you’re right, but we need to also be pragmatic and come up with a solution that covers both.
PAUL OAKLEY Yeah, I think that we’re back to starting with the end in mind. The client needs to basically define what they want in terms of the attributes and that. We’ve had too many people saying oh, it’s too difficult, we’ll ignore any attributes because the industry can’t deliver them. We need to define what they want, the documentation, they need to define what document they want, what metadata they need associated with it, what naming conventions and what formats and things that they want the stuff in. One of the O&M jobs you asked me to look at, George, there is multi page…hundreds of drawings in a file called as-built drawings.
That’s the only thing the O&M people are going to get to go on is there’s a file called as-built drawings. And they’ve got to go through that and somehow find all of those drawings inside that. What hope have clients got when they’re getting files like that.
CHRIS MILLING Again, you’re back to specifying what data you need, but if the landlord’s system or the owner’s system has the attributes that you need, then there should be a means to automate what data gets passed on to them. So, if you have got a Revit model and you pass that through, there should be some way to consolidate it and do it. If you’re still going to pass a piece of paper, you’re never going to pull that data out. But it sort of rests with the owner of the building to say that we need this data, we’re going to have a place to store it, whether it’s in the cloud or whatever you want it as. And then you can specify to whoever needs to provide that data to give it to you and you can get your system to try and validate whether you’ve received it or not.
But if you’re going to still talk about drawings and information, you’re never going to find anything, you’re not going to get the data and you’re not going to be able to use it. So, you need to move away from drawings and say we’re going to store this data and you’re going to give it to us. As Pierre said with his passport, the passport office I’m sure has decided what attributes they’re going to be stored against you. When you fill in the form, they take all of those fields, they put it in. So when you’ve got that unique identifier, of course it’s going to bring back that data. Because they’ve done a data collection, they’ve asked for that, they’ve given you your passport and now it’s got the rubber stamp on and they know who you are.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yes, I agree, Chris. The challenge though, and we need to look at where we are in the real world, the majority of construction projects are still based on the fact that it’s a document or a drawing that’s being produced. The models are there as another element, and it may well be that it’s required that a digital model is also provided. But the contractual measurement of these projects, my understanding is it’s still on what drawings are produced and what documents are produced. Am I wrong?
PIERRE VENTER For me, the models, and for everybody in the meeting, is not necessarily Revit. We’re talking about open BIM, IFC formats, we’re talking about a cross section of applications that produce different containers i.e.different formats. I think from Chris’ side, the issue behind all of this is that if I’ve gone on SharePoint and I take a SharePoint list that’s available on any single device. So, even the smallest contractor, the less sophisticated contractor, can then get access to that information. The bigger problem, and I think Chris this also ties in, if I’m using IBM Tririga as a CAFM system, or IBM Maximo, the person who defines that is the client.
So, for Paul Oakley, the issue about it is using the right term, it’s the need and not the wants. Because if you said to the client what is it that you want, they want everything. And you get into the actual business case with those people and say do you realise, I can give you all of this and it’s going to cost you a million and a half. The next part is what are you going to do with it? You’re going to have a room full of nothing. Tonnes and tonnes of data, tonnes and tonnes of paper, and not be able to retrieve it. And this is the part, like we had the comment earlier, we need to go to the end. What’s being delivered? And what is the need at that point?
Now, a fair number of these outputs actually need to be defined, like I said earlier, with sufficient detail. And there are all of these different standards that will give us the ISO standard of how it’s going to be named, how it’s going to be delivered, what the content will be etc. But if we go and actually take what that form looks like and say that’s a sample of the form, here’s the data. And Chris, the part is that you can tell the computer to go and fetch, aggregate, break up, split, create the actual requirements that the end application or data structure requires.
So, we can do that. But one of the biggest parts is actually the validation. So, whoever puts junk in needs to be kicked out. We mustn’t have garbage in, but we need to have everything with a validation that says this is what is the acceptable value. And that takes some structure.
GEORGE STEVENSON Pierre, I absolutely agree with you, but without repeating myself too much we’re dealing in the real world. And the fact is what you’ve been talking about here is what we’ve all been working towards in this group and also there’s a few of us that have been promoting that over the years. But the practice is that’s not what is being delivered. We’ve got many projects that have had large information management resources applied to them. And the quality of information that’s actually being produced, the quality of modelling that’s being done, irrespective of which software is being used, is poor. So, what’s actually being done in the reality is weak.
The other thing I would say is that we’re talking about this as all buildings are new builds. Actually digital handover happens on existing buildings between different stages, when some more work is done. So, I think we need to also accommodate the fact that a lot of buildings are already existing, so how can we up the game with existing buildings with their records as they are and then keep them up-to-date?
PIERRE VENTER But George, there’s two things here, about the capture of information or the use of information. So, technology gives us an enormous tool to enable us to do things and this is something that I’ve been doing with another client. And the issue is do we collect asset information along the stream of the design and engineering team, to the point that it gets to the contractor. Then onsite and up to the handover. And each of these cascades is an incremental process that eventually gives us the product at the end which is as constructed or as installed. The other stream is as we’ve been working there with Barry, is about photogrammetry and using AI technologies and technologies of recognition.
And connecting it, along with the digital product passport, to the real world. In other words, using technology to bridge the gap of sophistication and capacity. And for the cost of that, as an example, you can get a Lidar scanner to capture, put all of the information in. The savvy part is going to be getting AI to go and recognise etc. So, we’re moving into that realm right now, it is becoming far more feasible.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, to be frank we’re pushing the envelope on that as well, as Active Plan we’re doing a lot of that sort of work. But what I’m saying is that what we have to do, it’s getting back to the basics. To enable a landlord to sign that declaration, which is a legal declaration to say that they’ve got all of the information, we need as a collective to provide a simple way for them to sign that off. And actually knowing the locations of things and what they are and what product was used, at the very basic level I think is a starting point for that. And that’s what I would like to see if we can collectively agree.
ADEY BADMOS I’ll give you an example. We just completed 80 metres clad in remediation projects which started in the heat of compliance with the new regulations and all that. When the contractor was engaged, we agreed that Golden Thread is key to this, all of the documentation needs to be put together and all of this done. And frankly, no one knew exactly what we were doing, we’re not sure exactly what it’s going to look like. So, there were all sorts of papers signed and agreed. And I can tell you it’s completed, all we’re talking about is just the right documentation. So, it has not been delivered as expected, and I think it’s down to a couple of things.
Number one, it needs to be standardised and simplified. So, if there’s a standard to follow, because someone mentioned earlier on the clients need to be clear. The client doesn’t really know what they want, we just know that we need to comply with these regulations. And what does that actually mean? How would it be useful? How would it become a useful tool in maintaining the building? How do we make sure that everything that we need to comply with the regulations is included? It’s not clear.And I think the other thing that happened was as the project carried on you could see less emphasis on getting that information together.
When I look back in hindsight, it is so important that there should have been an expert on that project throughout with sole responsibility of making sure that this information is put together in a format that would be useful. And I think that’s missing. Maybe there is a standard document, a standardisation for people to follow, it might be something that we need to build on, improve on. For me, I think it’s about keeping it simple, getting it standardised and having an expert there to monitor that all of the way through. That was missing, to me it was a total failure.
GEORGE STEVENSON Chris Jeffers, you made an interesting comment in the chat.
CHRIS JEFFERS I can only put across my experience of the things that we’re talking about here. And I’m conscious that we’re probably all very aware of them, but we’re still seeing them and we still can’t seem, as an industry I suppose, as a collection of like minds, to distill our thoughts down to what Adey was just talking about there. About simplifying the process, about coming together on a common schema and about helping the people who are going to use this information in the future. There is still this, it’s not insurmountable but there is still a divide between the process that designs and builds something and the information that comes from that.
And all of the really good work that’s been in that space over the last few years, all of the ISO standardisation, it’s all been really good. But it’s overtaken the people, it seems, in terms of actually who are going to manage that information. And I know that’s a gross simplification, but we see it quite a lot. I work for a big engineering consultancy, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s just the sort of projects that we get involved in are very varied, bug e still keep seeing the same themes. And so I’m sat there thinking but why is it then that we cannot seem to corral our thoughts and bring all of our thoughts together on some of the really, really good information that is out there, because I think there is a lot of really good information that’s out there.
And try to put something together to help the people understand that. I fear, only my prejudice, that some of this is driven by commercial interests around not wanting to change things. And we’ve got to get away from that. We've got to move on and say forget all of that. it has to be something that is, again in a very simple way of putting it, good for everybody, in terms of what that standard schema is. I’ve never thought that it’s not possible, but we still don’t seem to be moving towards that. And i suppose that’s what I’m trying to say in these comments here around this. I know it’s very easy to put out what the problems are, without actually a solution, I’m very aware of that.
But it’s still that sense of frustration that we’ve got some great people on this call and all of the other calls as well. I think we’re absolutely all facing the right way, but what it is then that we would actually want in terms of a product? Or a supporting framework of products that would come out of this work? Because that’s where I think we should be looking.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, just to build on that. What I’m trying to get to, and I think we achieved it yesterday with the Golden Thread group, and that was saying this is the minimum level of information that we expect supply chains to provide. Now, if we can do that and that can be broadcast to supply chains, that will make it a lot more easy to work through it. Let me give you an example, I was speaking with an FM contractor about this and smoke detectors, for example. Do we need to know where smoke detectors have been installed? Now, I would have thought, Paul is an ex fire fighter and he’s a building safety manager, and Paul thinks we should know where smoke detectors are installed. I also think that we should.
But when I was discussing it with the FM, they said well yeah, we wouldn’t put that into the CAFM system. And I understand why because if they put it into the CAFM system it means that they’d have to have a maintenance activity against an individual smoke detector. And therefore, if the client was asking, or if the team were asking that particular FM whether they needed the information, they would say no, we don’t need a record of the individual smoke detector. But if you talk to the fire engineers, or the building safety managers, you definitely need to know which room a smoke detector is in.
CHRIS JEFFERS It’s the wrong driver, this is what I mean about those commercial interests, it’s the wrong driver behind that.
GEORGE STEVENSON And that’s why, thinking about it, we’ve got asset type and also system and also asset. Because if you simply want to know what the emergency lighting system is, for example, you don’t want to know the individual lights when you’re doing the PPMs, then you can just pick it up at that level. But you can’t pick it up at the level of asset information unless that’s been provided. And I think that this is a principle that we should be working to.
CHRIS MILLING Just on your last point with activities against smoke detectors. So again, the first thing is that the industry just needs to know about data collections. So where you were saying FM don’t want to know locations of smoke detectors, there’s no reason you can’t load a location against the smoke detector. But the activity, if you are doing checks on that sort of thing, would be to do an activity against the systems. So the system would say I’ve got 20 smoke detectors, it would list the locations and somebody could just tick that they’ve checked it. So, if you know how to organise your data you would put it at the right level and sort it out.
But they need to know how to do their data collection. Until they start doing that, having a big remit of all of these different attributes and they don’t know how to store it, or where to store it, or where you put your activities at. You perhaps just have to start low down to say facilities management, what do you need to do? Do you need to do an activity against the system? Or do you have to do it, you could say that it’s a system asset anyway, so you’re doing toe activity against the system asset. But they’ve got to build up and get that confidence and then they’ll start getting the data.
Because I look at these sheets and think yeah, that makes sense, but there is nowhere to store it which is why you get documents passed around. Which potentially do store all of the information, you can look at it and interpret it quite well, but you can’t get at the data. So, you’ve got to perhaps build it up that way and see how you can sort it out.
PAUL OAKLEY I just wanted to pick up on some of the comments in the chat. So, if you create a drawing sheet within Revit, you give it a title, you can have parameters associated with it. Most of the CDEs have requirements of filling in information when you put them in there. So, just having, you can export a spreadsheet from a table in Revit and therefore you’ve got a whole series of data about all of the documents. COBie has a whole series of data about documents. From the various CDE solutions you can export, normally in an Excel format, the data there.
So for whole design and construction, the process of passing data about documents happens. It just seems to be when we move to the handover to O&Ms that they seem to forget about the importance of the data associated with the documents. I think the other thing Chris, is this actually defining what is required for handover to the asset team, as opposed to what was the project documents. And I think that to identify the difference between those is another crucial aspect. The trouble is that it’s often left to the contractors to identify and they’ll basically just give you the lot.
GEORGE STEVENSON And in an inconsistent way. So, if you look at critical information about location, everybody should be using the same locations references. And if you might say that 30% of the people that are providing information aren’t using any modelling, then we need to make sure that their documentation actually reflects that. And if it doesn’t, it needs to be rejected. Can I just explain what I’m hoping the outcome of this could be, If you agree with the approach that we’re taking, what I’m really looking to do is to have between the Golden Thread group and this group, a position in place where we can have an agreed way that the O&Ms and handover information is audited. Because if we can do that, if we can have a common way of what we’re actually looking for, then that can actually get fed back to supply chain members to say that on these projects.
I mean, Jack Rollinson, a BIM manager at Leeds Hospital, they will be receiving projects through and handover information, where largely the O&M information will probably be completely disconnect with what you’re doing, Jack. If there is a way of standardising the way your colleagues are maybe auditing that information we’ve got a way of feeding back to the supply chain so that they do tell us which room a smoke detector has been installed in, even if it’s not been modelled. Can you, in the chat, say you’d like to be part of that review or audit process, or you’d like to be engaged in where we’re going with this.
We’re floating the idea of calling it a Golden Thread Taskforce, just to give it some sort of community, and we can then feedback to MHCLG, because they’re very interested in what we’re doing, and the HSE is very interested in what we’re doing. So, if you can put your name in the chat to say that you’re interested in the Golden Thread Taskforce because at the end of the day, for all of the guidance that’s out there, all of the standards, unless people are actually able to do it on the ground then we’re getting nowhere with it at all. We’re certainly a significant industry group here.
PIERRE VENTER I’m going to go the end and work backwards. The first thing is that client’s responsibilities should be to provide the platform that all of this is going to be structured on. We’re taking about a framework, that’s the layer on top of it, that’s the structure of how things are going to shared around. And we define what’s being delivered. And the reason behind this is yes, there’s times when there will be appropriate information in a model form. There will be appropriate information that’s in a data form. There will be documents, so those three because they tie in with Revit. The important part is that in order to get information in and out requires an interface, and that’s where this validation comes in.
And it goes back to something which is very evident. If you go to KPMG for an audit, there has to be a hard copy. And we haven’t moved everything into digital in the audit process. In other words, that’s the binding thing, that’s the document, the hard copy. My concern is that we need all of the connected data. So, when there’s somebody who’s created something in paper form, we have the ability to scan it. If it was a drawing, the same thing. The model itself is then connected, we all have devices like this (maybe not iPhones, whatever), but they all have the capability of producing coordinates. Now, within all of the projects that I work on, we have coordinates given at the core of every floor. And that becomes the datum from which everything is going to be measured on that floor.
So, the models themselves, they’re incredibly powerful. However, we need to make it that the person who collects it has access to that interface. In other words, the best way is the photograph because the photograph doesn’t lie. It can be digitally locked, it can have all of those fancy things. But the kind of quality that you get out of that, there’s a couple of things which we’ve said.Not only does the client need to provide it, but there’s also a need for the project team to have training on any single technical issue. So, whether it’s a white van chippy, a middle sized contractor, or even an old grey guy like me, we all need to be brought onto that skeleton on the framework.
Because without that, it’s fraught, we’re just making trouble for ourselves. And we’re sitting with piles of data that is not utilised, is not connected. And I do think it’s really important that whatever effort we’re putting in should have a cohesive background.
RALU POPA From all of the discussions today, there is a disconnection between different stages and different metadata, or different informations that we are putting into there. I’m working for a big programme in this moment with different stages and we have a person specifically dedicated that is called asset integrator. It is a big programme, probably 20 years, so you can imagine the requirements that were on the beginning of the programme are not the same requirements as its progressing. Metadata are defined and one moment afterwards will be modified.
So, for that one we have an asset integrator, who could actually map or translate the requirements that were on one moment. And also they can develop and see the requirements on the next moment. So, maybe we could take this into consideration as well. Maybe not on a biggest level, but a requirement the asset integrator really helps us. It’s not defined person, it’s a defined department who is taking care of all of this.
GEORGE STEVENSON It would be very interesting to learn more about that, Ralu. Is it a building project? Or is it an infrastructure project?
RALU POPA It’s a building.
GEORGE STEVENSON Is that something that you’d be able to explain to me a little bit? And maybe we can set up something, that would be a worthwhile thing to do. The fact is, if you’ve got a role there then whatever the activities are, the methodologies that you’re following there is something that we could incorporate in this process.
RALU POPA I can make a small presentation and I can present how the things are working.
PIERRE VENTER So, the first part, the classifications that we use, Uniclass, very simply for everybody, in Revit populate all three systems, EF and PR. Product information is right down the end, but the box is already there that says I am a door, a door system. So, it ties in exactly with everything we’re talking about. It’s a system to start off with, like a door set, a system the frame set, the door set, the lock set and everything. The other part I think is really, really important is that that simple classification ties it the whole way along that stream. And just for your information, rooms, spaces, areas, zones can all be extracted, like we did the demonstration yesterday.
When I put that object in it has a room pointer, and immediately every single thing, if you do rooms and volumes and you calculate it in Revit, the other systems also do a similar thing. Is it will say this object is in this room because that’s the spatial geometry. And this is the part that, part of our definitions that we need to put in is what is it that we need to get out? How it’s done is dependent on that piece of software or the operators.
GEORGE STEVENSON That’s very interesting because on a project that Paul is looking at at the moment, the model has been handed over, but all of the views, all of the sheets, all of the areas have been stripped out. And as I understand it, that’s not uncommon.
PAUL OAKLEY We’ve had about 5 or 6 major projects where that’s the approach that particularly the architectural teams have taken.They basically strip put every view, so basically you’re just getting the 3D model with the 3D view. Even the site which is a special view is removed. The model is pretty much useless then to do anything with.
GEORGE STEVENSON I don’t think the clients understood that that was going to happen.
PIERRE VENTER Intellectual property is a big argument that’s going to pop up. If I’ve got information that I’ve added value to and I’m not being paid for it, I will pass on a proxy. You’ll get a room and that should be in the definitions. You will deliver the rooms and spaces and areas and zones.
GEORGE STEVENSON So, you can’t generate floor plans from it though, which is interesting. The fact that you can’t generate a floor plan from the model, is that right, Paul?
PAUL OAKLEY Obviously you can create the views, but any annotation that was previously applied to those views, like marking up of fire specific requirements, any line work, any annotation is lost. So, any of the drawings that were produced from that model, you’d have to go through and manually recreate again.
GEORGE STEVENSON So therefore, the client typically wouldn’t have the expertise to do that. And certainly I suspect they won’t have been expecting to have to do that.
PIERRE VENTER Badly advised, unfortunately.
LIAM FLORANT That’s quite correct, that’s quite common practice to remove the views, rooms, all of that data. That’s to avoid intellectual property, but also to avoid confusion because a lot of the contractual output is the 2D drawings, the PDF, not the model itself. For that information to be kept in the model, I think the model itself would have to be contractual output. Or what I see a lot of the times is actually the COBie information is the replicated information that is coming from the model. So that’s where you would find all of the room information, the area information. That’s all maintained within the model, but can also be exported out in an IFC format or in a data sheet format as well.
But that has to be communicated to the design team as early as possible so that it’s part of their contractual obligations. And is not kind of asked for in the middle of a project, which tends to happen a lot from my experience. I’m a BIM manager at HTA Design, on the architecture side. A lot of the times it’s not part of our contractual obligations to provide that information. But if that’s communicated earlier on in the project, we are able to do that. So, that information doesn’t have to be recreated on the client side.
GEORGE STEVENSON So, that’s something that any clients on here need to be aware of. It's something that they should be asking for, and to be fair as Liam is saying there, that ought to be incorporate in with their fees. Paul, is there anything else that you want the team to do? Do you want them to look at that spreadsheet you were showing earlier?
PAUL OAKLEY The folders, we should send that out for comment, yeah. Or find a place for putting it.
GEORGE STEVENSON Pull it up again, just to explain what you want people to do. Because I’m pretty sure that if we send it out as an email people won’t have time to read it and interpret it. We think this is quite a simple thing to do.
PAUL OAKLEY So, we’ve created a list of what we think should be the content here at a high level. And then typical systems or work packages, what should be within those. We’ve then said whether we think these are things that should be provided as documents or data, or both.So, we’ve identified that certain things are either at facility level, or a floor space, zone, whatever, the typical COBie levels of stuff. And the for documents we then put the Uniclass classification on things. And if there is a typical document title, we’ve just left pill? 1hr 2mins 26secs for that, if that’s something can be put in. And then if it’s data, so things like users and usage will be contacts would be standard COBie, names of things.
So really, it’s looking through this list, defining if there’s other things that you think are missing that we need to put in. Then if you think, whether you agree that there should be documents, data, both, whatever. And if you want to look at the other areas, fine. But I think the key thing to start off with is have we got an agreed list of content and expanding that out as much as possible. Some of it, we know there’s to put a lot of detail on. Some of it we’re thinking about should they actually be an attribute, as opposed to a document or a thing that’s delivered. But let’s just get that list sorted out and agreed first, really.
GEORGE STEVENSON So, if you’re willing to spend 15-20 minutes on this and give us a bit of feedback. I think if you could put in the list health & safety file review that would be very helpful and we can send that out to you. Can anybody do that? Karen’s just said she would, that’s great. Anybody else?
PIERRE VENTER George, I’ll give a couple of minutes. The part I would say is that document needs to be shared because then all of the comments will be on one document and you’ll be able to do the comparisons with it.
PAUL OAKLEY OK, I’ll try and put it on my OneDrive and fire a link out from that, then everybody is accessing the same one.
PIERRE VENTER Paul, on the top right hand corner is the share button and that will share that document and you can give it a series of email addresses and everybody can then put the information in on columns I, J, K, etc.
GEORGE STEVENSON Thanks everybody for your input today and also your commitment to what we’re trying to achieve. And we’ll try and pull this together, along with the other two groups, and make some progress.
CHAT
Chris Milling (External) 03:40 pm
It may be worth seeing if you have examples of handover sheets that organisations are using. They are often developed because they might have fields that can be consumed in the landlord's system
It seems apparent of attributes needed but organisations are not going to be able to work with it if their systems can't use it
Would the Revit file have that metadata? Not much gets pulled through when the model is rendered as a pdf
Pierre Venter (External) 03:49 pm
Depends on the PDF export tool. Bluebeam does that
Chris Milling (External) 03:50 pm
Would the .rvt file contain more of that metadata though?
Liam Florant (External) 03:51 pm
Surely all of that meta data is only captured in the CDE rather than the individual PDF
Chris Bicknell (External) 03:51 pm
O&M needs FM input to assign classification to ‘real life’ - capex and open often don’t speak same language. Needs a operational schema at outset for data protocol.
Houghton, Joe (Unverified) 03:52 pm
Needs addressing in a organised, logical and specific to teh project - to often its just a paper dump of products
needs common language between Construction and FM provider and there CAFM system
Andy Cumberpatch (External) 03:54 pm
Previously I have worked for a company where we produced O&M manuals but these were not in digital format. This seems like a fantastic idea.
Chris Milling (External) 03:56 pm
The passport office has decided what attributes they want and they have a database that can store it
Chris Jeffers (External) 03:56 pm
This is essential - a common approach between construction and FM, but is this not a "given" (not that it always happens of course...). This has to be a key criteria to track and monitor as part of soft landings - that documents produced through construction will be fit for purpose and useable by the client / end user, and so in an accepted format / schema. This should be set out in the works information - but as we know this is very often too high level, and based on what the construction provider will (can?) provide, rather than what the end user / FM actually needs...
Houghton, Joe (Unverified) 03:56 pm
In response to Pierre how often FM on board and paid to provide info at stage 1 about how CAFM system set up as thats the info that needs to be inputted
Pierre Venter (External) 03:59 pm
Paul Oakley The Needs and not the Wants. Single term to define that.
Andy Cumberpatch (External) 04:00 pm
Will the drawings still be there but in a digital format only
Chris Milling (External) 04:05 pm
In the real world they can do it with car production. It can be achieved in in construction. You should know what data you will need.
Afam Unaka (External) 04:06 pm
George Stevenson, thank you because some of us with existing buildings
Chris Jeffers (External) 04:07 pm
Existing buildings - this is the most common area we come across the issues we are discussing here, as (for example) an extension is added to an existing building, delivering digital information as a result (from the client spec) but the existing teams on site are using systems which are not (immediately) compatible with this new digital data set, and crucially - no one asked them what they wanted or needed as part of the process
Afam Unaka (External) 04:10 pm
Adey Badmos, at the design all the requirements should be very clear with all the path names to followed
Joe Stott (External) 04:11 pm
Generally speaking the model(s) purposes is/was to create the information required to be able to build the facility - whilst they may be helpful in communicating the design to FM teams they were never (currently) intended to be used for FM purposes.. Revit is a Design Authoing tool and nothing more.. Its outputs however could be useful in other formats/platforms but the Revit file itself is of very little use for FM purposes - Any Revit model will be out of date come the end of the 12months defects period anyway..
Chris Bicknell (External) 04:15 pm
Whilst I was lifecycle director at Operon FM we always sought to have a position at design stage (PFI and other projects) and reviewed spec and data from commencement. That way we had good handover data without the need to spend possibly £100k’s to translate from project (ir)relevant data dumps.
It made business sense - the more so for better operational management ongoing.
Houghton, Joe (Unverified) 04:15 pm
the CAFM system should have smoke detector as a item and then the report identifies every smoke detector
so they need list at handover of rooms with them
Agree with Chris they need to know locations - it wont be on CAFM sytem as individual items
Chris Jeffers (External) 04:18 pm
Relevant to this conversation - this just launched (this week...)
Joe Stott (External) 04:18 pm
Surely CAFM systems can handle the concepts of types and instances? (i dont have enough exposure to such systems to know this)
Chris Milling (External) 04:20 pm
You export the data from the contactor - then have frontend validation by the system that needs to consume the data before it is accepted
Brian McKenna (External) 04:28 pm
Maybe there should be a new "Role" something like "Handover Manager"
Chris Milling (External) 04:29 pm
Good to be a Groupy - System, Asset, Zone
Joe Stott (External) 04:30 pm
that is standard George
This is driven by the PI providers
Joe Stott (External) 04:31 pm
We are appointed to produce PDFs and Navisworks models .. None editable formats
Chris Milling (External) 04:32 pm
Perhaps the Building Owner needs to own the model, and then share it with contractors
Chris Jeffers (External) 04:34 pm
Hi Brian, yes we try to identify this role in the GSL support we provide, it is not a "standard" role, but in effect, is needed for someone to do in the projects we work on - "who is going to manage the handover..?" and of course, we want this to be a client side person, who knows what is required for client CAFM / CMMS...
Joe Stott (External) 04:34 pm
I do this as a service to some clients post defects period but its not in a standard architectural scope
Chris Jeffers (External) 04:35 pm
But arguably - post defects is too late (!)
Joe Stott (External) 04:35 pm
nope - clients don't care about the data within defects..
Joe Stott (External) 04:36 pm
often their responsibilities start at the end of defects..
Chris Jeffers (External) 04:36 pm
Handover activity needs to start in RIBA 5
Chris Milling (External) 04:37 pm
Do clients ever use data people?
Joe Stott (External) 04:37 pm
ideally yes
Karen Ostler (External) 04:37 pm
I'd be happy to have a look at the list for sure. Email it across to me. Health & Safety File Review