Golden Thread Workstream Meeting 02-04-2025

GOLDEN THREAD WORKSTREAM MEETING 02-04-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON What I wanted to do was to explain what we’re trying to achieve this morning. We’ve obviously been doing a lot around digital handover, the digital record, interoperability, a whole range of different enabling things. But all of those actually crystallise in what we call the Golden Thread. The challenge is that we’ve got lots of different people interpreting the golden thread in different ways. And that’s broadly part of the way the government and the regulators have set this up because they don’t want to be prescriptive. They want the industry to come back and explain or determine what should be provided to keep the building safe.

The challenge with that is that if we’ve got the guidance that we as BIM4Housing a few years ago contributed to, in terms of the CLC guidance of what the Golden Thread is. That’s a 70-odd page document that everybody is going to interpret slightly differently. The problem with that is that when we’re asking supply chains to provide information in a form, we’re going to be giving everybody a different perspective on what’s needed. Now, what we thought would be useful is for us as a collective, and in this meeting alone we’ve got 36 people. We’re people on the ground who are either consuming this information or creating it, and then having to keep it up-to-date.

So, what I thought would be useful is if we could agree our interpretation at a very basic level of what the Golden Thread should contain. Not so much how it ought to be created, I think that’s a separate matter, but what it should contain. Then we’ve got an opportunity to up skill the industry and to be able to make it easier for people to comply. I’ve got a few slides that I wanted to go through to explain why I think this is so necessary. As Active Plan we’ve been doing work for clients reviewing and auditing handover information. This is a recent example of a fire safety manual, have you seen the location of the fire dampers? It’s internal. Which for asset management purposes I think is inadequate and I want to understand from everybody here whether you agree with me.

The same with the fire and smoke dampers and perhaps worse with the fire stopping. These are all safety critical items which have to be inspected and we need explicit information on, this is all to common. Over the last 4 years we led the Golden Thread Initiative asset & survey information group which was part of a much bigger consortium of people. And we fed that information back to the Building Regulations Advisory Committee (BRAC) and we also went through with subject matter experts in 12 of the safety critical items to actually identify what they felt was necessary. Some of you contributed to this and some of you may be aware of it, some may not.

So, these are all resources that we’ve got and we came at it from the point of view of what is that asset doing? Let’s say, for example, it’s a fire door or a cavity barrier or a smoke detector, what’s it doing? What do people do to it to stop it from working? What information do we need to know about it to ensure it performs well? What tasks and method statements and procedures are needed to insure it’s been installed, commissioned etc? What level of competency needs to be in place? And also how should product changes be recorded? If you agree with that principle, this is what we fed back, we’ve actually got that information in detail about all of the main asset types.

So, this was for doors, breaking down what risks is a fire door mitigating, what do people do to it and also what information do we need to know about it. So, we’ve got this in some granular detail and you might argue that there is too much detail there, but it depends on what people need it for. We’ve also done a lot of work over the last 18 months or so on standardising some key things. This is fire door inspections. We basically built on what had been done for the NHS. So, this is a standardised way of fire door inspections being done. And also that can then tie into SFG20, but SFG20 is quite generic and high level. It’s quite detailed, but it doesn’t tell you how to do things, whereas that’s what the guide does. And also this is new work that we’ve got coming out which is for dampers and fire stopping and cavity barriers.

So I hope you feel that that’s going to be a useful resource that we can all tap into. It’s on that principle that I think there’s an opportunity for us to create an industry response to what the basic levels should be for building safety. And in particular, and I appreciate it’s not the only thing, but if we look at it from a fire perspective this is now enshrined in law as being required. This, Regulation 38, has been around for a long time, but how often would you say that you get an as-built plan of the building which illustrates the cavity barriers? Fire doors are often indicated, but smoke detector heads generally may not be. I’m going to ask Justin to show some work that he’s done in the past on identifying where fire dampers are.

What we’ve got to recognise is that a lot of this work that we might put into specifications is actually being carried out by specialist subcontractors who have probably been appointed on the basis if lowest price. And they may not be aware of what their legal requirements are. I don’t know if all of the landlords or responsible people on this call are aware, bit for the last almost 2 years there’s now a requirement for the landlord to sign a declaration to say that they’ve got everything that they need to ensure that the building is safe. And I think knowing where fire dampers are and where the various different alarm systems are is a critical thing. And if it isn’t provided that’s a breach.

And contractors have also got to declare that they’ve not only provided that information, but they’ve also received a notice from the responsible person to say that they’ve received it. So, I’d like to suggest that we look at this from a point of view of all of the fire critical items that are mentioned in the regulations. And also what I’m suggesting is at a very basic level, I mean the Golden Thread, depending on how it’s being interpreted, it requires quite a lot of information. So, specification, for example, needs to be incorporated. But a very, very basic level, what I’m suggesting is that we create something that’s a real baseline. I think we need to know what asset types have been installed.

I think we need to know the individual assets and having some sort of unique reference. Now, we get that in most cases on doors because that’s a very common practice for architects to produce this. And in fact actually a lot of the things that architects are required to do are done, in my experience, quite well. But we often find that the other assets are done less completely. So, the location of the asset is important. The system reference, if it is part of a system, we should be getting that. I think we need to know what product was installed and some data sheets about it. I think we need to know who installed it, who commissioned it, who inspected it. And also then afterwards, maintenance activity.

Now, if we as a group could agree that these are key things that are needed, then this could be a mechanism to say this is a pass/fail from the Golden Thread task group, or whatever, if we think this is a good thing to do.

KEVIN BAYLISS Two things for me. `One, in terms of those elements of cavity barriers and things like that and how we’re displaying everything. Are we considering BS8644 because we’re looking at the moment at doing, we do a lot of our stuff from a design point of view in Revit and we’ve got fire engineers internally. So, we’re looking to develop them as an integrated part of our design systems in terms of our models and things like that. So, as part of that we’re setting up a template for BS8644, typical layering of different drawings that identify different elements from FA creation rules? 13mins 46secs and various other things from a fire point of view.

The second part was also I understand the Golden Thread two things. So, there’s the compliance Golden Thread, that’s to do with your accountable person and all of that stuff. The one about compliance is part of the Golden Thread, but then there’s over and above that in terms of maintenance. Whereas actually from a compliance point of view, because we’ve been writing some of these documents for the client at Wolverhampton, for example, and in the process of writing to Golden Thread policy with them. Is basically this is about compliance and this is about maintenance. So I think people need to be clear about what is compliance requirements and what is a maintenance requirement. So when we talk about Golden Thread we need to think about those two elements. Because BSA is all about compliance.

PAUL OAKLEY The Bs8644-1 problem is they defined a load of possible parameters for their FireIE, but they haven’t actually identified what those parameters should be identified against. Whether even against systems, types, what type of assets etc. They were supposed to…then they backtracked when they were queried on this to say this was some guidance, not actually how to do it and they were going to go away and they were going to produce something that actually worked and put it out to industry. As of yet, I haven’t seen anything come out supporting that.

GEORGE STEVENSON Paul, that’s exactly what I’m thinking that we could do as a group. What I’m saying, at two levels. For people that don’t know what BS8644 is, it’s basically some guidance to explain what fire safety information should be being provided in a standardised, very similar to COBie, format. Now, rather than drill into how we’re going to do this, what I want to do is look at the why and what is it that’s got to be delivered. And I think if we can get that we can then open it out to say OK, how do we do this? And I think the other point, and it’s something that Paul has made the point on many occasions, it’s about purpose as well.

So, for example, I was talking with a maintenance contractor yesterday and I was saying that the location, for example, of all of the key asset types, that needs to be recorded. And they said well, we wouldn’t put the location, the individual smoke detectors into our CAFM system. Now, I know that that’s true, but most people wouldn’t be aware of that. The reason they don’t do that is that when they’re doing the maintenance they would maintain a detection system, rather than the individual detectors. But the point is from an asset management point of view you do need to know the individual detectors because if you don’t and one of them fails, you need to know which space is now exposed.

So, even within the asset management community we think that they all talk as one, but they’re not because they’re doing different things and it will depend on the purpose. We were at a site the other day and the sprinkler system, they’ve actually got a misting system rather than a sprinkler system. And we learned that the heads themselves have got to be sent away for refurbishment every 5 years. Now, that exercise means that you need to know where each of those heads are in the building, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to manage it properly. So, I’m coming at this from the point of view of how can we simplify things so that we’ve got a standardised way of saying what should be provided, for all of the key asset types (all of the fire related ones). Opening out to the community, do you think what I’m suggesting is worthwhile?

PHIL THOMPSON I think my approach to this is are we not overcomplicating it at this level? Because for me the Golden Thread, as it’s described, is a thread of information, it’s a thin line which joins things together. A lot of the stuff that you’ve got on the screen and referenced is more to me…imagine that the Golden Thread was a washing line, you’d hang this information on it. It doesn’t necessarily need to be linear, these things hang off of the thread and then they take you down the path of giving your additional information from maintenance activities, something like that. But the thread is an end to end continuation of something that joins both the manufacturer’s item, the asset, the maintenance, all of the elements within the construction, it joins it together.

So, I think it needs to be laid out in a graphical way so that each person can see the relevance of the information that they’re going to work with in their specific part of the construction sector. For instance if you talk about merchant information. A merchant selling these products, passing them from manufacturer to the contractor doesn’t need to know a lot of the depth of information that you’ve described there. It’s got no relevance to them, they’re only dealing with transactional data. They need to know, for instance, what the product typically is as a manufacturer part number.

They’ll need to know the weight of it because they’re putting it onto a vehicle and they’ll need to know any logistical information and then they’ll need to know the price and things like unit and measure within that as well. But principally, all they really need to know is they have a unique identifier that goes it’s the what, what do they deliver? And all of the other information is almost superfluous at that point.

GEORGE STEVENSON And that’s exactly right and that’s down to purpose, which is what I was saying earlier. So, the point that you’re making is absolutely right that the merchant has got a different requirement in terms of information than the client, than the maintainer etc. But if you read the Golden Thread Initiative report that I sent out which was the culmination of probably 150-200 people from the industry contributing to that. And I’m not saying that we got it all right, but it’s pretty comprehensive and I think we need to do what is possible at the moment. So, all I’m saying is I’m trying to boil it down to something that’s achievable because I think overall the Golden Thread is an amorphous concept that is interpreted very differently, which you’ve just illustrated perfectly, by different people for different purposes.

And what I’m thinking is that if we could do something that’s really going to be helpful to landlords because the point I’m making is this is now a legal requirement. If a landlord signs to say that they’ve got all of the information that they’ve got the locations of the fire dampers, for example. If they sign that and it proves next year to be untrue, that’s a criminal offence. And I don’t think at the moment that the industry is giving the clients the opportunity to check that information in a simple way. And what I’m suggesting is that we boil it down to just some basics.

PHIL THOMPSON Just on that point then, I agree. So, why don’t we define the absolute minimum piece of information that each person within the sector. If you imagine the chain, it goes from manufacturer, merchant, contractor, maintenance contractor, client. What is the absolute minimum piece of information that that person, that role needs? Don’t overcomplicate it.

GEORGE STEVENSON I agree and I think that what I’ve done there is the absolute minimum that the client would need, not so much the maintenance activity, they’d have to add that afterwards. But handover, which is what Regulation 38 is about, at handover I can’t think of anything on there that they wouldn’t need to know.

PIERRE VENTER My one concern is that we need to have a skeleton, a structure that will allow it to grow and shrink, so it’s got to be dynamic. Exactly what you’ve got on the screen at the moment is that there is one key principle and that is every asset, every element must be clearly identifiable. So, that’s the first rule and I made a statement in the chat. One of the things about all of this is that the information has got to be available on demand online at the point at which its required. So, it’s basically a series of layers. At the core level you need to have that very succinct, small set of data akin to RIBA stage 1, 2. As you go up it increases, but that can increase as a series of depths.

In other words, the important part is that top layer because that’s the thing that you see if you open a form, if you see a model or whatever. And it’s to try and maintain that sense of - it’s got to be simple. And at the same time somebody has got to own it and this is I think the biggest part behind it, that that person who owns it might be handing it over at various phases during the design, to the general contractor into the operations side. And that is probably the more important part is at that milestone what happens beforehand, what happens afterwards in principle.

GEORGE STEVENSON And obviously we need to look at how simple it is for supply chains to provide it, because a lot of the things that are in the fire safety side and what Kevin was talking about earlier BS8644. That stuff that’s installed by specialist subcontractors and those specialist subcontractors generally won’t be putting stuff in Revit models. So, we need to be able to accommodate that and recognise that they’ll probably be using schedules. But there are ways that that can be done relatively straightforwardly in Revit, I’m going to ask Justin to show what he’s been doing.

CHRIS MILLING Just listening into this again it’s my point that when you’re handing over the information, it’s when it’s being handed over where is it being put? So, it’s one thing discussing all of the attributes which you’ve got in front of it. I’m sort of a groupie, like systems, I like assets, I like zones. Because when you’ve got those three things defined you can then start tacking on which components or elements are a member of it. So, you keep talking about asset types but for me that’s just really for finance people. So, a building is an asset, you won’t have that in your system, you just want to know what the volume is, what depreciation is.

You want to know what your systems are, so your MEP systems for contractural point of view is moving forward parts of those systems which might be maintenance. So, if you can decide how you want to divvy up your systems and then look at the components that you need attached to that system which might need maintenance. And that’s almost the way that you’re doing it, but you’ve got to figure out what your groups are. And again, when you’re talking about locations, not the sort of spacial zones but the almost functional zones, so you’ve got those two different IFC elements, the zone ones.

So, if you had a contract which is looking at lighting in corridors then essentially you’d say oh, we need to know we’ll have a lighting system, so we’ve got A, B, C, D, E, F, G bulbs, if anything needs to get swapped up with. If you’ve got a fire safety system, what components are part of a particular fire safety system which is under a contract? And you’ll say these are the components. So, if somebody for maintenance needs to look at a system because something needs to be updated they should say oh, there’s been a change to this system. And then they can chase up with whoever has looked at it to see what they did with the component that they were looking at. So, perhaps, a faulty fire door or something like that.

But in some of these meetings people have talked about systems, you’ve talked about systems already say sprinkler systems. But that’s almost the key, other people have said you have your work packages, but essentially you want your underlying systems and figure out which components are important to make sure you’re attached to them which need maintenance. And that’s where you’ll start collecting this sort of root bit of attributes for them because then you’ll have the unique ID, you’ll know who’s put it in so you’ll know if it’s in warranty and so forth. As opposed to everything which is in the model.

GEORGE STEVENSON Just to explain, you’re quite right that the term asset type is interpreted by different people for different purposes. And often an asset type is looked at a building level. What I’m talking about in this particular context is an asset type of being let’s say a pump. And then a pump of a type, a circulating pump and then the individual asset would be that there’s 20 of those pumps in the building so they’re then referenced. So, from an asset management point of view, and ideally they should be part of a system. So you’re quite right that the hierarchy should be a system and then asset types in the system and then individual assets.

CHRIS MILLING Just on that point I’d still say, I’m nerdy and look at the IFC definitions. So, an asset is a group of components which has a monetary value. So, you can have a system asset which is a lift system, or I know it’s away from fire safety but decent homes. You’ll say oh, the roof needs to be repaired, but what you’re actually saying is the roof system needs to be repaired, all these flat things. So you’ve got several levels, but the roof costs, that whole system costs so much.

So I can say I’ve got a system asset which costs this much, it will depreciate. It’s the same with any of the doors or windows, fire doors. If they’re part of a system that system asset, a fire safety system will have a value and it will depreciate in value. The components are a bit if and that, the components more than the system parts, I don’t know.

GEORGE STEVENSON You’re quite right to say that we’re getting into nerdy territory here, but it’s really important stuff. The way we’ve been looking at it, the way that Paul has been looking at it who is also very knowledgeable about the whole IFC thing, is we talk about systems, but also its circuits. So, the equivalent, I don’t know what the MEP equivalent of a circuit is, but it’s things that are actually part of the same service, as it were. We’ve got many people that have not spoken yet. Before we go on I’d just like to hand over to Justin because he’s prepared an overview for us of the work that he’s done.

JUSTIN GILLARD (shares screen). It’s very interesting listening to what everyone is saying so far. I represent a BIM consultancy that delivers handover information to building owners. And certainly when I am looking at a model or whatever, to back up where George is going with this, is I have effectively an audit list. And George, you last slide where you listed the baseline of what might be needed which is what you’re trying to get out of everybody in this meeting, is what do we record as a minimum? And the metaphors offered so far have been a washing line and a skeleton with layers. But it just shows how differently everybody thinks about the same thing. A bit like a religion, we’re all looking at it from different angles, potentially.

I’m going to demonstrate how this has been done with regard to fire stopping in a retired living building, which is what you see on the screen. This is Revit, I’ve got rid of the menus at the sides as it gives you more graphic space. That’s the building itself, if I actually turn off this model you’ll see that what that leaves the external envelope goes away. There you’ve got the underlying services in two separate models now. So, you take that off and you get left with this. A major part of what’s blocking your view here is the ventilation model, so let’s just get rid of that. And what you’ll be left with is what was modelled by Nexus BIM. And what it represents is much of the containment as cable tray and basket.

The incoming mains pipe which is rising vertically there. So, you’re not seeing all services is my point, you’re just seeing the ones that were decided to be coordinated. So, that’s what the model looks like when you strip it back to just the essential services. And George’s interest in this is how, so anecdote: the company that instigated this process went to the building owner and said he’s a load of 3D coordinated information, what do you think? And they said it’s incredible, we’ve never seen anything like it before. And then the quantity surveyors got to hear about it and they said we have great difficulty quantifying the builder’s work, how many core drill holes there are, how many fire dampers there and which walls they go through, whatever.

So, the quantity surveyors came back to my client and said can you tell us how many penetrations there are through the building? Because it’s very had to get a price on this and it’s a very expensive process, the more we know the better. They approached Nexus BIM who said if you can model it, you can locate it and schedule it. So they said give us a price, the price was given and it went ahead. So, what I’m going to demonstrate here is where the fire stopping has been manifested in a 3D model as physical objects that represent, it’s like a digital twin in a way. It represents what is assumed to have been installed onsite. So, here you see a cable tray in blue, then if I select that, that is the supposed fire stopping that has the space around it which expands in a fire scenario.

So if I go here, this is a ground floor plan of the building. You can see here that the services and plans, you’ve got the sprinkler pipework coming out. And let’s assume that in each of these spaces the architect’s model actually has a room, a 3-dimensional object which is a room. So, if you combine the available information that comes from the design team. So, the external envelope, the internal walls, the internal rooms, then the services of interest, you’re then able to place around those objects the fire stopping. So, I know along this corridor where the fire walls are, where the pipe or service passes through a fire wall, we’ve got that. There is a wall there that that’s passing through and this is a 3-dimensional object.

If I was to go into that object and see how it operates. In Revit you have this host object here which represents the wall, or floor, that it passes through. There’s the fire stopping object there. And if I go back here and select that and turn on the properties for it you can see that for this selected fire stopping here it’s able to have its location recorded, how thick the wall or floor is (which is 145 mil). If I was to change that to 300, for example, you’ll see that it will actually grow in thickness. So, what we’re able to do is capture at the design end, or even during construction, or even as-built, we can capture where these things are as a source of information. And then this leads us here, this is what I prepared for the meeting.

So, this is the schedule, by building storey is how this has been arranged for this demonstration. You can see the manifestation for every single fire stopping object in the schedule. So, for level 1 you can see that this first item here, its location is the wall at level 0 for core A riser plant, that’s its location. The wall or floor thickness it passes though is 300 mm, the core radius is 50 mil. And so the information and the quantities are all here and if I zoom out you’ll see some examples. So, that is the fire stopping typically passing through a fire rated wall with tray passing through it. There is a fire rated wall cluster, so you can see there’s a lot happening here. You’ve got the dry riser pipe passing through here with its fire protection, you’ve got 4 cable trays in the corridor.

You’ve got two separate sprinkler pipes. This is a mains water pipe going to each apartment and over here, another example, the fire stopping for a dry riser. And there it is, if I activate this view and select that and isolate it, there’s the fire stopping that’s passing through there. So, it’s a very sort of digital twin way of doing it, it’s a way of manifesting the physical world in the virtual world, if you like.

GEOEGE STEVENSON Justin, one of the things on that schedule, I’m not comfortable with the location being a fire rater wall. Would it be possible to have it so that it’s like you would have with a door schedule? Where you say it’s either in this space or it’s in these two spaces.

JUSTIN GILLARD It would be possible. So, if I just go back to this subject here. So, this is the object that’s doing all of the work. If I tip it up like that what you’ll see is that it has this object here like a tail and that’s the room location object and you can drag it. So, one of the limitations of this project is that the architects didn’t use Revit software, they used Graphisoft Archicad and as such when they exported the IFC file it did not bring the rooms with it.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, that’s a common problem, actually. There’s a lot of people on the call that may not be as familiar with Revit. it’s not so much Revit, but BIM generally. And one of the key things here is that what Justin is doing here isn’t normal. Because this level of detail typically has to be done by the installation contractor because it’s their responsibility for identifying what they’ve actually done, rather than what the designer was intending should be done. There’s obviously a handshake there.

ANA MATIC I just want to say thank you for sharing this, an incredible level of detail, particularly graphically. Can I cheekily ask was some of the graphic level of detail done in retrospect to make the presentation clearer? Because we have to do this now on projects, especially because of Gateway 2 process. It is incredibly difficult to keep this level of detail going while the design is developing.

What I’m trying to say is this can be done once everything is settled, once everything is designed, but in effect in your normal Stage 4, which maybe only lasts about 8 weeks, it’s very hard to do all of the scheduling, all of the locations and also achieve this level of graphic detail. So, I’d be interested like who’s paying for this? Who’s doing it? It would be really, really helpful to know.

JUSTIN GILLARD What it was, this is a retired living building in the UK and the building owner, it’s the quantity surveyors who are employed by the building owner, that actually requested this as an exercise. And so it didn’t cost….

ANA MATIC So, the building is already built?

JUSTIN GILLARD No, the building, the external envelope was in, but the services hadn’t gone in at that point. So, I think they’d probably completed the ground floor plan by the point that this was requested. And so, you can see that it serves multiple purposes looking back. So, not only does it tell them they can go out and get a price for this work, but it also acts as potentially an as-built record until such time that it’s verified onsite as being there. So, like many things with the BIM authoring process which is my world, there’s multiple wins from the process. But put it this way, whatever a person charges to do this, this represents probably 3 to 4 days work, start to finish.

And the graphic representation, these views are just clipped effectively from this here. So, if I get that fire stopping, for example, I can then put a box around that, to create a view this is, and then I can select that box, and I can then rotate it. So this is typically how those views were created and they are typical views. You wouldn’t want to, if we go back to the schedule, at the bottom there’s 323 instances, so obviously you wouldn’t want to visually represent all of them.

ANA MATIC No, it’s just that we’re struggling to even just schedule them, let alone start producing graphic…what I’m trying to say is that in the 8 weeks that you have to coordinate Stage 4, you are literally going to have one moment to do this. You might not have 4 days, because the services will come in, the walls will continue to move because things are being changed. And then you suddenly just have one moment to do this. I’m interested in the process and I’m interested in the moment in time and the funding for this. It’s fabulous work, but it’s quite hard to achieve on a project.

GEORGE STEVENSON The key thing about this meeting isn’t to determine how things are being done, so what Justin is showing there is great. And the reason that I asked him to do it was that it was suggested to me that it’s relatively easy to do the door schedules and the things that architects tend to do in Revit, but a lot of the specialist subcontractors work isn’t actually easily added into Revit by them. So, you’re absolutely right, Ana, that the challenge is how can we do this financially in a practical way.

And the fundamental thing that I’m suggesting is that we should say we need to know those basic things. We need a common reference so everybody is using the same space references for things, so all of the fire critical assets are referenced to the same space. That seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? But what we’re finding is that that isn’t the case.

PHIL THOMPSON I just wanted to again, I suppose, challenge a little bit, because as great the graphic is and you can obviously see the representation of the products where they are. Looking at the schedule my question would be always to look at the inputs and the outputs. So, where is the correlation which maps the Golden Thread about the validity of the product that was installed? I.e. where is the part number for it? The ID that maps back to the design, selection etc. And then on the outputs, how odes somebody again, where’s the information that relates to the physical product that’s been actually installed? So that we know what kind of maintenance criteria.

JUSTIN GILLARD Thanks for the question, totally valid, of course. If I just turn on the properties for this, going back to where this information request came from, it was from the quantity surveyors. So, if I can just put something up quickly here that came to mind earlier. What you’re seeing on the screen here is from a building owner and it’s called a BIM responsibility matrix. And what they are saying is that for these line items, these are maintained assets that the building owner wants to know about. So, I am addressing your question, Phil. And if we come over to the right hand side where these coloured boxes are, this is where they request what information they want.

So, if I zoom up, you’ve got things like model number, warranty, these are all standard COBie fields. So, it’s all about the make, the model and what George suggested as well, you can put the commissioning information in and this sort of thing. It’s a standard schema called COBie. So how, Phil, your scenario would be realised is fire dampers would appear in this part of the matrix and it would say by the way, it was in this project but we took it out. See there, builder’s work, if I unhide that. In this particular project builder’s work, fire stopping systems, they actually took it out aa a no longer required.

But had it been in that list, the information about it would actually have been specified here. And then what you would do is if I select that object here I could actually go to the…there’s an interoperability tool set that’s up here that I can’t get to. I could basically put those COBie parameters that you see there, I could pump those parameters into this object and they would appear here, the COBie information. And then, Phil, your question is how is it recorded? Where is it recorded? The asset information. It will be recorded in the asset here and then later on you’d go to…there’s the tools…

GEORGE STEVENSON Justin, I think we’re diving in again to how you do it, rather than than what’s the base output.

JUSTIN GILLARD Phil, the short answer to your question is because these quantity surveyors didn’t request the information that you brought up, thats why it’s not in there. But the short answer is that it can be put in there if they want it.

SIMON NEWTON I was just going to reiterate some of the facts that Ana stated. If you’ve got a client that’s going to specify COBie as an end deliverable, ultimately the IFC with all of that lovely data associated with it is how you’d then link that back to your tech subs. And your technical queries and any documentation on that side of things, I think that’s something to consider.

GEORGE STEVENSON We’re actually going to be covering that in the meeting tomorrow, it’s on digital handover. We’ve actually been doing quite a lot of work on that which we can share with you.

SIMON NEWTON What we’re currently doing is a lot of local authorities, housing associations and bits and pieces. We coordinate all of the information from the architects all of the way through to design construction completion. But when we get to Stage 4B and it gets handed over from MEP to an MEP subbie, we’re finding that all of the information drops off of a cliff face. And again, that’s the issue.

GEORGE STEVENSON What I wanted to do was just reach out to everybody now and say is this something that we are interested in. Put your name in the chat if you’d like to be involved going forward and we’ll work out how best to do that. Obviously, what we’re trying to do here is just come up with a baseline. We can also then look at how best to address it. We can also signpost to solutions and processes that are best. But where I’d like to get to is this group becomes an expert panel who can audit or review what’s being done. Now, how we do that and whether that’s something that people are interested in doing as a paid service or something like that. I think it’s such a critical area that there might be all sorts of opportunities from that.

But the fundamental thing is that we end up with a common understanding and a common agreement in terms of what should be being handed over. And I would also ask you would you agree with me that those principles that I flashed up earlier, asset type, asset location, product, are critical things that we should be asking for? Certainly I think so.

RICHARD FREER Well, is there anybody who doesn’t think they’re critical?

KEVIN BAYLISS I don’t disagree that they’re critical, but I’d written in a note whilst we were talking. This is great in terms of the assets themselves and the asset information that you want at handover and so on. But drawing it back to the Golden Thread and if you’re dealing with buildings is the fact that the whole BSA element. So if, for example, you’ve got a competency, you want to know that that person’s competence, where is that stored.

A compliance element, somebody has signed off a compliance statement or anything against the gateway. If there is a change when it’s in use or when they’re constructing and it’s different to what was designed, where’s the backup? Where does that fit? That information also needs to be part of that Golden Thread and we need to be thinking about that too because that’s the stuff that we’ve been talking about.

GEORGE STEVENSON I absolutely agree, I was just trying to boil it down a little bit. And also the specification, what’s that product supposed to be doing and why has it been selected and all of those sorts of things. But I have to say that I think we’re a little way from that on a lot of the projects that we’re looking at, at the moment.

KEVIN BAYLISS OK, it’s just that I’m going through that process at the moment at Wolverhampton and we’ve put that into their folder structure and trying to do that, and putting all of those documents together for them. So, maybe when we get to that I ca show you what we’ve been doing.

GEORGE STEVENSON That would be great, Kevin. Thanks very much. We’ve got another session tomorrow which is on really a subset of the Golden Thread which is the digital handover.

CHAT

Pierre Venter (External) 03:39 pm

George, the principle must be that "all data & info" should be connected to supply on-demand, on-line and owned by a party. Easily Identified, classified. Provide the data/content in containers, and the relevant items would be accessed by the parties, on-demand.

Define, As-Built vs As-Constructed?

Terence Horsman (External) 03:43 pm

I agree with Pierre. The Golden Thread contains design, construction, operational, and maintenance information to ensure comprehensive building safety records. This includes the entire supply chain, up to date, on demand, managed by the relevant building owners and operators. "Internal" as location is surely not sufficient...

Pierre Venter (External) 03:46 pm

Terence Horsman. The location is defined in the model, in the as-built, in the documents., and are accessible. Who maintains that, the data quality and the handover of ownership. GIS/Location and Barry B. has a support in the photogrammetry etc. its layers of info, or separate containers.

Andy Cumberpatch (External) 03:46 pm

This could be done with Digital Asset Capture

Pierre Venter (External) 03:49 pm

Bayliss, Kevin (Unverified) Is this not seen a s series of lenses, to specify the "Task", Audit/.Compliance, Model/Asset Data? George Stevenson, the Model is made with systems, and the systems have a elements, components and assemblies. The dept of the view starts with the Parent, and further detail is available. The QS has used that for procurement, the GC for installation, etc so its done once.

Phil Thompson (External)
03:59 pm

Pierre Venter (External)04:01 pm

George, the Model is not Revit, its data in a format, that the user can read, and use. Could be IFC, etc

Dimitrios Theodorou (External) 04:02 pm

information containers per se

Simon Newton (External) 04:04 pm

Isn't this part of the EIR and AIM requirements? with the end deliverable insight defined by the client. Delivering this on local authority or housing association information this is not well defined in general. MEP design consultant to MEP subcontractor 4a - 4b and stage 5 onwards is always a bun fight and individuals capabilities (BIM wise) are still limited. IFC should always be the end deliverable or OpenBIM (on the BIM side)

Pierre Venter (External) 04:04 pm

The build-up of the objects in the project, starts with Assemblies, then components, and elements. As in Doorsets, locksets, systems etc. All classified,

Dimitrios Theodorou (External) 04:05 pm

ISO 6707

Ruben Romero Vivancos (External) 04:06 pm

most of people do not know what you talking about ASSET, terminology not clear

Joe Stott (External) 04:16 pm

We would really need 2 room locations so its likely that we would have to create the fire stopping item as a door family which is a hack but would get us more reliable data

Bayliss, Kevin (Unverified) 04:17 pm

A lot of subcontractors don't have the ability to do this in modelling.

Joe Stott (External) 04:18 pm

Ana is spot on!.. this type of modelling is very time consuming and should ideally be done once - meaning the design of the MEP would be required to be frozen ahead of starting this modelling... This simply never happens..

Pierre Venter (External) 04:20 pm

Automate the process, Dynamo will populate this connection and update accordingly. The location can be updated as part of the process
Justin Gillard. Thats a great demo to get awareness out there.

Philip Hannabuss (External) 04:28 pm

We need to look at how the information is exchanged and importantly Asset owners need to take ownership of the CDE platforms that facilitate this data handover

Ana Matic (External) 04:29 pm

Yes pls. Keep me included.

We are seeing different approaches even from project which are going through Gateway 2 submission (let alone more standard projects which are not subject to BSA gateways)

Afam Unaka (External) 04:30 pm

Justin Gillard very interesting demo, I will to know if it can be done for existing building?

Justin Gillard (External) 05:02 pm

Subcontractors not BIM enabled should seek BIM consultancy services for BIM mandated projects, or increase their own level of BIM competency

Joe Stott (External) 05:09 pm

Subcontractors should be nowhere near a model (imo) - they should be providing the data and the data may well be being pushed into the models (if needed) but requiring them to up skill or outsource will simply be adding cost onto the process.. Lets not forget the golden rule of BIM is to look to be more efficient not add cost.. If the SC's are comfortable providing data via Excel or Forms or any other basic method then the objective should be to streamline a means to ensure that valuable data is connected to wherever it is needed.
Now i guess there is an argument around how much is it costing at the moment NOT having good/complete data but this unfortunately spans the divide between Capex and Opex.

Justin Gillard (External) 05:56 pm

All subcontractors working on BIM mandated projects are informed of their requirement beforehand and budgets adjusted for the BIM processes. We are at a stage where BIM enabled subbies are being awarded work, and those not enabled are left out. In the 21st century there is no excuse for not to be able to provide information in this form, especially when the law demands it. The designers are mostly now up to speed with BIM, following the UK government's mandate, most suppliers now provide their products as 3D BIM objects, the system is in place and working. It has resorted to the law pushing the laggards to up their game. ActivePlan is a great solution to managing facilities post-BIM handover.