Golden Thread Workstream Meeting 03-02-2025

GOLDEN THREAD WORKSTREAM MEETING 03-02-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON …a thousand dollars to replace it and all of that, it was nothing to do with the product itself, all of it was just trying to track down the information, incredible. It was a manufacturer, I think it might have been Boeing or somebody like that, it was somebody where they really track these things.

Obviously we’ve got a mix of people, some were there this morning and some weren’t, so I’ll just cover some of the same areas if I may. I think a lot of what we’re doing here, they are connected. So, the digital asset capture that we did last week, if you didn’t have an opportunity to see that, that was all recorded and it’s part of a jigsaw. What we did this morning, we did digital handover, so we had a really lively discussion on that. And we were talking about Regulation 38 and all of that sort of stuff. What I’m going to do now is jump on to what we’re doing here. Just to position this, at the moment we’ve got three main working groups that are active. One is fire & safety critical assets, what we’re trying to do is determine the information that we can get on those products.

There’s also a PFI session starting next Tuesday, so if you’re involved at all in PFI or PPP projects, either as an FM or as a supplier to them or as a contractor that would be something that’s interesting. Because the digital, the PFI handback is coming down the line very quickly. And then we’ve got the international group where we’ve not set a date for that yet, but we’ve already go things underway. We’ve got people in Hong Kong working with us and Paul Sheedy, he’s very active in that area. What’s in green there are things that we’ve been doing over the last 6 months that we’ve got to a stage. Workstreams are task and finish groups, so what we’re doing here at the moment is on the golden thread is intended to be a task and finish group.

So, we have two or three meetings, perhaps and then come up with some ideas and publish something. We’ve done now digital asset capture, this morning we did technical submittals and O&M and Health & Safety files, we’re going to have another couple of meetings on both of those topics. One that’s coming up in about 3 weeks’ time is impact. So, impact is looking at the financial and the service impact of asset information failing, that’s one example of that. Where we are at the moment is that a lot of the work, one of my colleagues Andrew Handley did this slide probably 7 years ago. And it’s still the case that most of the BIM work, 3D modelling, is done during the detailed design stage.

There’s less done actually, from a practical point of view, during construction and handover because a lot of people are reverting to schedules and things like that. And the result of that is that we end up with a gap in digital information which is generally having to be picked up bu retrospective data capture. The beauty that we’ve now got is we’ve got reality capture and 360 photography that we can do to help with that. So, there are logical reasons why the BIM models aren’t completed: procurement reasons, cost reasons, and also programme reasons. So, although we want the models to be as complete as they possibly can be, sometimes commercially that’s not practical.

So therefore we don’t want to lose the opportunity, so we’re using digital asset capture to do that. The whole point about these workshops is knowledge sharing, understanding what’s actually happening on the ground, rather than theory and process. So, I thought this was interesting, the golden thread, what a lot of people are doing is they’re thinking of it as a single process whereas actually the building needs to be looked at as a complete system and how the individual components work together. All too often asset information is delivered as individual assets, or even types of assets, but they’re often not connected to systems. So, that’s what we need to crack and that’s what we’re trying to do today. That become really important because if you’ve got a particular hazard that happens, here we’ve got a fire breaks out in a kitchen, the main risk is smoke spreading because it’s smoke that tends to kill people.

And no matter how good the compartmentation is there may be one of those elements that fails. So therefore you’ve got to make sure that the smoke control systems are working and also the detection systems are working. And also that there’s proper signage to get people out when needs be. So, all of these things need to be coordinated, so that’s why the golden thread is so important to keep these things together. And the interesting thing, I’ve been involved in the golden thread for about 4 years now and it’s been amazingly successful in getting people to think along those lines. The problem is everybody is looking at golden thread, individual things, so putting asset tags, for example, on doors.

Now, that’s great to identify that particular door is working and also what its heritage is and what the data is, the performance. But we also need to look at what that door is doing. It’s actually protecting a couple of spaces, perhaps, and therefore we need to look at that in a more holistic way. And when somebody is maybe using Plan Radar or something like that to go and do inspections, we need to make sure that’s all glued together. One of the ways of doing that is to make all of the information machine-readable. 8So, the information requirements can be set at the beginning so that it can be tested against manufacturer’s products to make sure that they include the information that’s needed.

Then when those elements are then used in the building modelling process, or even CAD or surveying just producing floor plans, we want to be able to locate where those things are. if we do that we can end up with an automated digital O&M that then becomes the asset information model. So, that’s one interpretation of the golden thread which I think is a good one. Here’s an example of the way that we’ve been doing it. So, this is Birmingham Queen Elizabeth Hospital where we’ve got a spatial model, but this is identifying where all of the fire barriers are. So, rather than those being in a separate drawing, possibly even marked up just by hand, what we’ve got here is the fire walls and the compartments that they’re protecting, in a single environment.

And what we can also do is look at that, this is Manchester Royal Infirmary, one of the Sodexo projects. We’ve got here a 8spatial model and all of the spaces are then database containers that can hold the information, that may have come from many different systems and sources, but it’s being looked at in a holistic way. And the individual spaces can also have intelligence added to them, so in this case the clean corridors which is a clinical term, are actually defined so you can see which of those corridors needs top be cleaned in a certain way. And what maybe the floor surfaces and things like that need to be. So, this is an operational golden thread.

I was asked this morning by one of the housing associations if everything that we’re talking about was only about new build because that was her impression. So, I’m starting with this now to indicate that as far as we’re concerned the golden thread can start from existing buildings or obviously, ideally, we ought to be picking it up form new builds. So, this is showing here what the performance characteristics of that space needs to be because that’s a clinical thing that’s important to be able to retain. But what we’ve got here are all the assets that are supposed to be in that room and we’re using here the team at Manchester just goes with a low cost digital camera and takes the 360 photo. And they’re connecting the 360 photo to the assets and the data behind them. So again, that’s another example of the golden thread,

In part what we’re doing therefore is glueing together some probably very rich quality information, on a new build on would hope that the information is properly classified and structured. And the CAD data is name properly and also we’ve got COBie information, O&Ms, 360 photos. But one of the biggest challenges is that that information isn’t connected, so therefore people have got to manually go and check everything which makes the policing of the golden thread quite challenging. So, what we’re trying to move towards is a situation where we can remove the silos and integrate this information so that we can then pick the golden thread information, the asset data, from models (if there are models).

In many cases a lot of the detailed information, for example from maybe installation contractors, comes through in the form of schedules. Now, we can still use COBie for that which is a useful thing to do, to be able to integrate it with everything else. But we can also use 360 photos to pick up anything that’s been missed by the other two. And by doing that it means that we end up with something that’s joined up. So, findability is something that somebody has raised with me recently which I think is a really good term. Here, what we’re doing is finding where the fire dampers are. And in this particular case, this is a project that’s part of a large programme at the moment that’s being done in Ireland, and what we’re doing here is showing the fire damper information, that’s the manufacturer’s information, glued into what the product was, how it’s supposed to perform.

And then we’ve got it here being able to be located actually in the building, so you’ve got a simple plan that the FMs can use. This schedule of all of the assets is then intelligent enough so that when you click on it, it takes you to the 360 view in the OpenSpace model, so this is OpenSpace which was used by the construction team so that they could do that for quality purposes. So, the point about this is this hasn’t been done in any special way, but because the information has been classified and structured properly the documents, for example, can then be referenced to assets in the model. So, we’ve got here a combination of information that’s been captured through Autodesk, Revit and BIM 360, in OpenSpace, in SharePoint and also in Active Plan. And then we can then start to overlay additional information.

So here, for example, this is work that we’re doing in BIM4Housing. We’ve done fire doors, this ones for dampers, so it’s giving detailed information about how fire stopping and cavity barriers should be inspected, So again, if we can do this in a standardised way it’s going to make it a lot easier to record to do the legal requirement element of being able to record do we have the right information to manage the building safely. And that’s something now that on HRBs you’ve got to sign a declaration that you’ve received the information that you need. And the contractor has got to sign a declaration to say that they’ve provided it. These are the asset types that we’ve identified from the regulations that are critical.

Now, how many of you are actually confident that you’ve got all of the information that you’re handing over on projects or that you’re receiving, about where all of the cavity barriers are, for example? Because that’s not something that’s easily surveyed afterwards. Or, all of the information about ductwork dampers. The important thing here is that we need different information for different purposes and what we’re doing here is suggesting a way of doing that whereby we can have an O&M manual which has got folders for stuff going into, but that’s not necessarily the way that people are going to look for information. The way they’re going to look for it may be based on a particular view. For example, you can group together information by what’s needed for Regulation 38. Another attribute might be what’s needed for the fire and emergency file which they're not the same thing, as we learned this morning from the contribution from Colin Blachford Brown, who used to lead the HSE on the Building Safety Act.

So, this is the sort of thing that we want to really try and get to so that, as far as the golden thread is concerned, we want to know what was specified, what was actually installed. Who installed it and how, how was it commissioned and maintained, when it was replaced, what was installed instead. And therefore one of the big challenges that we have got to overcome the problem of O&M folders, for example, being structured just by work package. So, that’s what the working group from this morning are going to be looking at. We need to figure out some sort of dynamic connection the models because not everything in the golden thread is going to be covered by real data. It’s often going to be carried by documents, but we need to make sure that document is done.

And we’ve got mechanisms then to capture the standardised product information in a way that can then be easily compared, so that when somebody is being asked to sign something off they’ve got a mechanism support in being able to do that. And one thing that’s often ignored are warranties, so we need to put more of a rigour in place to say have the warranties for a particular product been novated to the client, rather than to the M&E contractor perhaps, who has actually purchased the item. So, these are things that we need to ask so that we can get the most out of things. This is really looking ta how we’re using COBie to achieve this and also this is now starting to work through where we’ve got quite a large community of people that are supportive of having a digital handover.

And looking at using technical submittal processes which are already in place, people are using this already, but we want to make them more standardised. So that, for example, when a product is proposed, we went through this this morning where we’re looking at having a technical submittal by the designers And then the design technical submittal can then be picked up by the construction teams, who may need to change things because of availability or suitability. But if we’ve got a proper process that standardises the way that this product information is compared then it’s going to make it a lot easier for designers to sign things off. And then to be able to then track that product right through the process, so we’ve got something that is then managed. What I’d like to understand is where people are on the journey.

DAVID CAREY One little anecdotal example which combines everything that you said, totally supports it. I was involved with the commissioning of a new contract at St Helen’s Hospital about 16 years ago. It was being built by one the major constructers of the UK in a brand new site, redeveloped, right alongside the old Victorian site, the crumbling part of the hospital. And it was built using BIM which was quite a novelty at that stage for a newly established PFI contract, 25 years in the making. So, it’s now over its peak in terms of funding and delivery. But the critical issue that came up meeting after meeting in the pre-design and the design phases where FM was involved in the process was where the designers, it didn’t cross their minds about integration and collaboration with other trades.

So, for example, exactly the examples that you gave, fire doors replacements and the scalping of concrete out of the project wherever possible. And there were two specific incidents that were related, one of which was the underground service channels where the laundry trolleys would go. And the designers built rectilinear T-junctions and they worked out that actually you could have a tug, be it personnel driven in 2008 or as they forecast by 2020 they would be robotically driven. And it could only carry 3 dollies behind it of laundry because it was a tight corner. Using BIM once you’d promoted it we said if you save yourself between 25 and 60 metric tonnes of concrete and round these corners out, you could quadruple or even quintuple the number of dollies that each tug can pull because it can drive around a greater arc or corner.

It was as if I was speaking magic and I’d come straight out of the Paul Daniels Show at the time. They sat down and what drove it was not common sense, it was money because they saved on the concrete they’d have to pour. When you then introduce into the access control on the fire doors, specifically for the automatic closing versions, if you had them automatically closing the life costings and this is where the PFI finance teams sat up and salivated, was that instead of charging the FM teams for every time a door is damaged when a delivery porter’s trolley goes through a door, you can add as many metal sheets as you want onto the doors, they’d still get bashed. But if you recessed the doors within the width of the corridor and provide a fire alarm triggered automatic magnetic release.

The doors are there when you need to have then and they will automatically close. You can put a sensor in that triggers every time you have all of the trolleys and delivery carts going up and down, so you know which one is where. Which you could then remotely using RFID active/passive tags, spot in the ops room so you know when there is oxygen crash cart is at any one stage. So, you then reduce the procurement of the number of vehicles that you need, the number of people that you need, over a 25-year lifespan. But only by drawing these other specialists in, and the security people, you needed less cameras, so you needed less copper to feed the CCTV cameras (because they weren’t Wi-Fi then).

But BIM was the trigger, it was the opportunity to generate cost management, value engineering, all of these good things that the builders and constructors and designers were incentivised to achieve, but you had to hand it to them as the FM specialist saying could we not do this in a simpler more proactive way. And the critical part was the Head Nurse at the hospital that said so, we could actually put some of the savings to control who has access into each theatre. So, when it’s sterilised to the highest possible level, it can be then isolated, kept in that condition for 10-20 times the duration because you don’t have people just wandering in and gaps in the doors, by raising the quality of the hermetically sealed doors.

So everybody wins using BIM, but we’ve got to get outside the silo mentality of it being a transitional process where the architects discuss with the engineers, hand it over to the builders. The builders build it with all the as-builts and then the O&Ms are brought in at the last minute saying here you go.

GEORGE STEVENSON Exactly, and I think that’s a fantastic example of where we need to get to. I should just say that obviously I’m showing some examples there that are featuring the Autodesk platform and various others. We’re working with Asite and people, so there’s going to be lots of examples, and that’s really what I’m looking for here from this group. To say how many people are actually, there’s a lot of people saying that the design and construction side is a golden thread, but what we really need to do is do exactly what you’ve said there. Unless it’s actually flowing in and the information can be used and edited and updated by the operations team, then I don’t think that’s a golden thread.

DAVID CAREY True, I agree. There’s another example classically just a few years later. I was working on what was then the new international airport at Medina which currently is still the only method by which you can fly into Mecca to do your hajj, your pilgrimage. Designed for a capacity of 8 million people a year and that’s now been raised, of which almost a third of that number comes through in one month during the holy month for pilgrims. So, therefore they had to build it fitted for, but not with. BIM was absolutely critical and it was built, a brilliant design and concept by a Turkish company. And it was built on time, on schedule and below budget. Don’t talk about the handover, that’s another case study.

But in terms of the international team, where it came round to walking round with a team of a dozen different specialists to do the final validation on behalf of the end client, which is the aviation authority for Saudi Arabia. And so the managing director of the airport said I see, but I can’t understand the things that you think are right and wrong. And so we took what was then first generation smartphones, we were walking round the data centre and we said before you even plug it in, anything, you need to have a hermetic cleaning because no BIM system will pick up what has come through the ducts already. You need to do 3D survey interior visualisation of the ducting, otherwise if you clean it and the carp is going to come around as soon as you get your crack system up and running.

But the most important one we said was the fire risk, you can’t open the airport yet. And they were absolutely bewildered. What had happened was the human eye can do things that no Ai system can do, until you programme it. And that was as you’re coming into it it’s designed to take the first of the levels of the A380s, and for those of you that have flown on those airbus aircraft there are 4 different levels bu which you can get to it. You can come out on the ground floor, go across on a bus, climb up a set of steps. We can go across on the airbridge on the lower level which brings you in for the lower deck, then you’ve got the upper deck and the other one is down aft. So, the connections in the side of the airport for the air bridges are at 4 different levels.

As we’re walking down, just pure curiosity and instinct that comes through white hair and experience, as I got to the entrance of the air bridge levels I looked up and I could see right up to the roof. so, if you had a fire outside the aircraft on the hard standing next to the airport and you didn’t have your air extraction fans properly maintained, the smoke would trap everybody at every level, irrespective of wherever the fire was caused. And the doors which automatically lock in a fire to prevent access via the wrong route for terrorists, you can open outwards to escape but you can’t get in. And you’d then have a problem of smoke actually being pulled up into the main terminal, purely by air extractors working against the realisation.

So, when we showed them that, freezing of the contract, I got a summons and a free flight to Istanbul to go and see the Turkish company. And then they used BIM on the screen, in front of the Chief Executive, to understand and they could manipulate with a guy sitting next to me, working his magic on the keyboards and the joystick control. And we did a virtual fly through looking at the air bridges. So they had a classic example, it saved millions because before the penalties could be applied, the last check pre-handover it was closed out. So, it has its value, exactly as you said by the example, but putting a multiple on it is hard to measure.

NEIL YEOMANS It’s actually building on a point that George and David made about the flow of the golden thread. The fact that following the RIBA processes and looking at 6 steps and then operate, I think underplays the fact that the hard part is the operation part, maintaining this information for over a hundred years id the hard part. All of this stuff at the beginning can be made very easy, or comparatively easy, if you view it through the lens of I just need a nice package to handover. Actually, I encourage everyone to imagine that you’re going to be custodian of this building for a hundred years and look at the golden thread for a hundred years. How on earth are you going to keep the data up-to-date? And then it starts to have knock-on effects on how you think about what the data needs to be.

And you’ve got to add in your supply chain and you’re out of hours processes and your customers knocking the building around. All of that complexity gets added in because part of the problem that we’re looking at just through the construction lens is we aren’t looking at any of the customer aspects of this. Partly because COBie is silent on the customers and so it doesn’t even get into the consideration, or the supply chain going to be using it thereafter. And partly because that’s what RIBA has always been about, get a nice clean handover and then it’s over to another regime. The whole concept of the golden thread is that it’s no longer a separate regime, you’ve got to view this from the end users perspective and the end user is the one managing that building for a hundred years.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, absolutely and I think you know, as far as Active Plan is concerned, that’s our major interest because a lot of our customers are the FM contractors. And just to give you one good example of that, we’re working at the moment for BNP Paribas, we’ve got a couple of projects on with them. But one of them is Tower 42, the old NatWest Tower, and the cladding panels on that have to be inspected every 5 years to make sure that the seals that are holding the glazing panels in are still robust. Now, one of the reasons that they’re doing that is because it’s a frightening thought that on a lot of these high-rise buildings in the City the seals have only got a limited life. Paul Sheedy has got an example of that that he’s told me.

PIERRE VENTER For me, the process right from design all the way through to the handover and thereon. The important part that I think we just waste a huge amount of effort, at the design stage we don’t fully populate the Revit component. With classifications, with IFC, with all of the various things that link the dots. And I think that’s where we end up causing some of the biggest problems that I think those came out in Grenfell, is about somebody having a certificate where the materials are not necessarily correct. And this part of trying to make sure that there is an ownership right the way through that’s inherent as a requirement for the golden thread to work and that there is ownership.

And even if that ownership is for a specific period and then handed over, it goes through an audit process and verification that it’s all correct and handed over. And I think this is where things like blockchains start to make the digital part of that where it’s being tracked the whole way through. But the other part I think is really important is we’ve got an input, we don’t process stuff and what we need to do is manage what the output is. Because the output is what’s going to connect many people. So the caring caused by sharing is really important, just not only from a contractual point of view, but because it provides so many other benefits to those people to absorb and interrogate and pass on information. So, really it’s just important for me the whole lifecycle needs to be considered. What are the inputs and what are the outputs? So, if that was a request I think whatever you put in is that it’s considered in that light, a long term thing, input and output.

GEORGE STEVENSON I’d add one other thing to that, I absolutely agree with you, Pierre. I’d say one other thing and that is that the people that are receiving that output need to check it, and not check it when they absolutely must. So, they need to check it because that’s the only way that we’re going to get improvement.

KEVIN BAYLISS …essentially people’s understanding of the golden thread and the golden thread obviously is not from RIBA 0-5 effectively, it’s through the whole life of the building and it’s a number of platforms. Whereas I think we’re talking about compartmenting, so what you were saying there was really, really important. And when we were talking about, I think we mentioned HRVB briefly, and HRB you have to demonstrate how you’re doing that as an occupied building. So, the safety of residents, the safety of anybody entering your building, it’s critical to have that. But what I was going to say that’s really important is we were talking about customers and the accountable person that run that building is basically having understanding, it’s not as simple as actually I’m going to do this and so on.

Actually I need somebody to be telling me and that accountable person what that golden thread should be. They’re running the building, they’ve got people working in it, what does that mean? What COBie do I want? Do I want COBie? Do I want something else? What do I need? In what file structure should that work? And how will the platforms all work? Without doing all of that we can always put something together and you wouldn’t have a square peg in a square hole.

PHILIP HANNABUSS I think that’s an interesting point there, because everything that’s been talked about at the moment, who is actually driving this through? Because in many cases if it’s a siloed activity it says through construction it’s got to be driven by the main contractor, it’s got to be driven by the subbies who are providing the information. Really this needs to be driven, as you say, from the asset owner from the very outset because when that information is coming through, then you’re not just going to end up with one PDF that we looked at earlier that couldn’t then be edited and updated.

Because you need to understand how that process is going to work as well in terms of the operational input that changes as part of that. You can’t just look at the starting point and say what the put output is, it needs to be driven all the way through from the client from the outset to say this is how we are managing our buildings at the moment and this is what we need you to do in order to provide this level of information. We don’t just want a static PDF or at worst a piece of paper because that’s not beneficial to us.

KEVIN BAYLISS And that’s what we’re doing at Wolverhampton Homes…we’re helping them to say look, actually, what do you want? What should your AIR say? What information do you need? What file structure does it need and what level of information do you need before you even start designing work…how does the contractor get involved? The subcontractor, what information do you need from them and where does that fit? So everybody knows that if you talk about golden thread it’s fit for purpose and everybody knows what they’re doing.

PHILIP HANNABUSS In response to that, it’s so interesting because from a service provider point of view it’s so common that the client just says well, how would you do it? How are you going to do this? And they kind of look at us as the service provider and say we’re going to have all of these answers and we’re like we don’t know team that’s gonna effect that on??? 40mins 25secs. I talked earlier about when I was working land securities, they didn’t know who the FM owner was going to be or who was actually going to manage that asset for them. But they’re making the service provider make decisions on how that information is going to be portrayed and it doesn’t make any sense. It needs to be thought out from the outset of how that is and then carried it through. It can’t just be forced on each stage to pick it up where it was left off.

GEORGE STEVENSON The craziness of that is well is that unless it’s the PFI, the FM contractor is probably going to change within 5 years. So therefore it needs to be very much owned by the client organisation. The other thing I would say is that we’ve already got the tools in the tool box to do a lot of these things and we’re just not using them properly. So, for example, on COBie, it’s designed so that there’s a number of different CObie drops and yet how many projects actually follow that protocol. The COBie is generally delivered at the end from a federated model and the likelihood is that a lot of the things that you need to maintain a building may well not have been modelled at all. So therefore, that COBie data set is going to be incomplete.

Now, that’s not a problem with COBie, it’s actually a problem with the way that the information has been set up, COBie is just a transport mechanism. COBie doesn’t define what information that you should hold, it actually is just making sure that when it’s put in the right IFC definitions and the right information is actually being added. But the point that `I’m making is that it needs to be done progressively, it needs to be captured and tested and validated at each stage. And that’s why i’m encouraged with what’s happening with the Gateways because it’s causing people to think about that.

PHILIP HANNABUSS You mentioned about having the right tools and this is something that I find over and over again and people talk about this. We’ll put in a tool once we get to that point and we’ll put in a tool once we get to that point. And then you have this system where you have all of these connected applications and this very complex information, that information is over there and that information is over there, and that information is on that system because it’s being provided by that company. It really needs to take the client ownership to actually understand the element of, let’s call it a CDE delivery methodology from the outset.

And to say you are going to be putting your information here, or this is where the outcome of your deliverable is going to be going, rather than oh, we’re going to pull it from that system and then we’ll sort it out later because we only need this amount of data at the moment, that’s all that we need to worry about. They’re not thinking about the longevity of the delivery and the ownership of that asset thereafter, and that’s something that I hear time and time again, we’ll buy a system when we need it, we don’t need it now because it’s too early on.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yes, and the other thing with that is also making sure that the classification and taxonomy and the way the information is being organised can be done not just for individual projects, but can be done at an industry level. So, looking at things like Uniclass, what we need to do is make sure that all of the asset types have got the right Uniclass definitions against them, both product and system the other elements as well, the other tables. But also making sure that those same asset types, for example, have got the right classification with NRM or SFG-20 because there’s going to be multiple classifications that have all been designed for different purposes. Now, if that can be done once and the reused many times, then we’ve got a chance of making it doable. And you’re not having to check it each time.

DIMITRIOS Based on the last mention, mainly the problem, the risers in the interconnection of data silos where that’s formulated in a BIM offering tool, whether that’s in an ERP that goes to the supply chain of the customer or the manufacturer or the person who actually provided that asset to the construction worksite. So, if you consider BIM as a main interface of interchanging those data with the various applications because this is the main connectivity that you want to achieve, in order to push those updated values to the COBie format and have a validated and updated file.

Mainly if you interconnect the supply chain medium that pushes that information into the IFC model. of course you can use any type of classification, but mainly it’s about interconnecting GUID and a trade number, whether that’s based from an EN or CPIN or whatever. And that will be automatically updated within data and enriched in the IFC model and pushed over then to the COBie data format.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, I think bringing IFC into it is possibly adding a layer of complication, to be honest. I’ve been involved with IFC for many years and I think it’s an excellent protocol for exchanging data, but a lot of people don’t recognise that there are different model view definitions, And the one that most people are using is the coordination view, whereas the handover information, that is COBie. The model view definition for handover information is COBie. And I think it’s a matter of people in the industry understanding what the right model view definition is for a particular purpose.

I’d also say that one of the challenges, I absolutely agree with you that the information needs to come from manufacturers and the supply chain, but they don’t use IFC, they will use probably something like ETIM which is the standard for product information. So, I don’t think we should get hung up too much on what the transport mechanism is, I think we should use the most appropriate transport mechanism for the purpose. The critical thing is making sure that it includes the right information.

PIERRE VENTER A quick comment, from work in the Middle east in Dubai, one of the problems was that we’re working in a global world. Now, you just mentioned there about having the classification system like Uniclass, but when you go around the rest of the world we end up with Masterformat, Masterclass, Omniclass etc. The other part is like NRM is that all of these things need to be defined by the client at the beginning of the project. And there needs to be somebody actually driving that and maintaining that because a client becomes the end user and if they sell the building on, or the tenant etc, there is still that train of information.

But what we looked at, the problem was trying to get communication using terminology, using classifications etc. And that’s where something like a data dictionary becomes really important, is that we can actually talk to people around the world, not through Google Translate but in fact getting the right terminology, using the right appropriate action and method term, because then people can read it and comprehend it. So, from the golden thread all I’m saying here is about let’s find a way that we can connect as many people into the same stream with the same understanding in the simplest possible way.

ANA MATIC Thank you, George, as ever for a brilliant presentation. I just wanted to reiterate what you were showing, for example your hospital examples are really good. I think as professionals what we need to do is educate our clients as the project is developing. Or show them good examples of what’s possible before they can actually make an informed decision, that’s what I find with our clients. We work across different sectors, so some clients will be knowledgeable enough or interested enough to make some of the decisions early, some will not. Some will only make those decisions when we are at Stage 4, for example. By that time maybe a lot of the models have been developed obviously for design, but not necessarily to deliver data.

And in that case data can be captured later, in simply scheduled form, it just depends how complex the building is, how complex the client needs are. It can be a hybrid between 2D and 3D, it doesn’t have to be all super-BIM. Does that make sense? Because ultimately what the client is going to be doing needs to be level with their needs, basically. And if it’s a simple commercial building it might not need as complex a management system as a hospital.

GEORGE STEVENSON Most definitely, one of the things that we were talking about this morning on the O&M project was that if you’ve got a simpler building do you need the same format, the same structure of folders and things. And my answer to that is you’re probably best starting with the detail and then using the data to str4ip out what’s needed. So, you have views of the information, so you’ve still got the complexity that people don’t see, but you’ve got all of the building blocks there. And then you can then filter it out according to what’s needed.

PAUL SHEEDY It was interesting, we just installed a lot of our technology for evacuation etc into 8 Bishopsgate. I had a meeting with Michael Minelli, the ex-mayor and architect for 6 Bishopsgate, and I could not believe my ears. As I looked over the Guildhall, 600 years old with perfectly good windows, and 8 Bishopsgate, the seals on the glass were only guaranteed for 25 years. And I just feel like what planet are we living on, we’ve just got to the stage where it’s all about how it looks and beautiful glaze fascia, and yet the glass is only guaranteed for 25 years, I question what everybody is doing in the sector. A £620 million building, I can’t imagine how this sort of detail gets passed by those who should know better, really.

GEORGE STEVENSON No, absolutely, we worked on a project about 4 or 5 years ago where the glazing panel fell out, this is at Broadgate. I’m told that the glazing panels themselves weigh something like a tonne, so when they hit the ground it’s miraculous that nobody was killed.

PAUL SHEEDY By the way, this building is 204 metres tall, I can’t imagine what speed they’d be hitting the ground, it wouldn’t bounce off you, put it that way.

GEORGE STEVENSON It’s intriguing as to how, it would be interesting to know if there’s anybody on the call that would know how do you go and replace the seals on something like that. That must be quite some challenge.

PAUL SHEEDY I just couldn’t quite believe my ears, we all sat there looking at them like you are joking us, right? And these buildings are now built for about 60 years…Bishopsgate, again, when we get to sustainability is this really the way we should be going forward?

GEORGE STEVENSON Das from David Miller, you’ve been showing us the work that your team are doing in terms of standardising objects and Revit families, and also tying that to the NBS specification. That’s a very important part of the golden thread.

ANDREW DE SILVA I think that what we’re trying to do is manage or control the part the part that we’re involved in as best as we can. We’re architects and we work through all of the RIBA stages, however, I made this presentation for the NBS a couple of days ago, is that that is only a small part of the lifespan of a building. So, we’re keen to be involved as much as possible with the clients to define what we need to design against, or what information they want. But also try and get the involvement of the teams that are going to be looking after those buildings. If and when possible George and I and others have tried to get local authorities, housing associations, schools, try and get those teams involved early, but it’s not always that easy.

So we’ve taken the view that we need to just try and standardise what we can manage or have control over, to take it through to the tendering, the construction period. So that we are able to output information which is accurate to what’s been built and designed against. But I think there needs to be more done, and again that point someone made earlier is we’ve got to make it easy for people, because ultimately we are just people trying to do whatever the job is that we’re appointed to do. So, we mustn’t forget that in all of the data and all of the models and information, how can we make it easier for everyone to do their job correctly. Because obviously we’ve been asked to take on quite a lot of responsibility, especially with the Building Safety Act as well now.

So, we’ve got to make it as easy and clear as possible, so for us standardising and creating this content library in line with the specification helps us try and make sure that our designs are compliant and that data in the golden thread is maintained. We’ll keep you posted on how things are going.

GEORGE STEVENSON What I’d like to do now is throw it out to the audience, because I’m keen to understand, there’s some people on the call who are landlords. Paul, what’s your experience of receiving BIM models? In terms of are you receiving them, are they being successfully used by the asset teams?

DIMITRIOS If I may say something on that, with respect to the quality of the BIM models delivered in the handover stage. it all depends on the8 initial requirements from the landlord, from the person who is developing the investment. If there is asset information requirement protocol signed, stipulated in which that protocol, the handover team, the team who is going to be maintaining the asset, who is going to be operating the asset. Has mentioned and stipulated their needs of information at the end of the handover, yes, it will be a BIM model that someone can use. If that aspect has not been treated then no data means no aspect.

GEORGE STEVENSON I agree with you from a process perspective. My question really was practically, do you have examples of asset teams who have taken what you’ve delivered and ere actually using it in 3 or 4 years’ time? And have they been able to keep it up-to-date?

DIMITRIOS In my practice, unfortunately not because I haven’t had the opportunity to have operational teams working from day 1 during the development of the project. This is the major question. The operation team knows exactly what are the information requirements for them to do their work as they should, and of course to communicate all the necessary information in order to maintain the asset up-to-date.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s the sort of answer that we obviously get quite a lot and we’ve spent hundreds of millions of pounds on the design and construction phase of BIM. And i can’t think. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve been asking a lot of people who are asset owners if they’re using the information that has been handed over. Now, I agree with you that they definitely need to become far more engaged, but is it the case that we are passing to them things that they’re not able to practically use.

For example, handing somebody an IFC file, let’s say you’ve got an IFC model that’s been handed over which is probably a federation of maybe 20 or 30 models. If somebody then wanted to move a door in a wall because of some modifications that have taken place, how would they edit that IFC file?

DIMITRIOS Again, it goes to show how people know how to model in the first place. If you maintain the asset, do not delete it, do not change the GUID, the global unique identifier, which is interconnected with the supply chain that goes to an acquisition code and so forth, then you can easily manage that modification.

GEORGE STEVENSOIN I’m asking a very simple thing, it may be too simplistic. But what I’m saying is that if, for example which is a common thing, that somebody would have to move a door in a wall, I’d like to understand how…that can have an impact on lots of different things because you move the door, the control mechanism for the door, the security system probably has got to get updated, there’s a whole range of things there. All I’m saying is that I’d like to understand from people who are either building owners or FMs how they are doing that.

Because I think at the moment we’re not really helping asset managers with their side of things. I think you’re absolutely right, Neil mentioned earlier the fact that the downstream activities aren’t being adequately considered and I think that’s absolutely true. But I’m interested to know whether there are people here who are using what’s being provided. I think the silence is quite telling, really.

PIERRE VENTER Something that my experience has shown from working in UAE is we were doing a large number of malls. And the issue behind this is that development goes up to the handover and then becomes the asset. But what happens is all of the work that happens in between, from the inception right the way through to the handover, is different parties actually have a clean break where something is handed over. They don’t take over and continue adding data and geometry and technical documents etc. And I think that that disconnect is for me one of the biggest problems, because by the time that it arrives the photogrammetry is the only method to be able to obtain something about, and I’ll use the term going into a digital twin later, where we’ve actually got something that we can actually tag and assign.

But we’ve lost all of the input up to that point and in some ways that’s fruitless effort because if it’s not required all we need to do is say here is a clarification. This is a door, this is a wall and that’s exactly what’s required till the time that it gets built and gets passed on. But I’m concerned that somewhere along the line we’ve got too many breaks where there is not a clear handover, where we’ve got geometry data and documents that are being handed over that will form part of the golden thread.

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely, and to a great extent that’s what Das is trying to do with David Miller to identify the NBS specification which can then be machine-readable. And it’s tagged to the asset types so that when the information does get passed over the fact that it maybe tied back to a photogrammetry model, or indeed a different a new model that’s been created for different purposes, i think we’ve got that thread going through. I think the idea of putting everything into the 3D model, that just doesn’t work, it’s just not sensible.

PAUL EYDEN Just answering your question about the example of a door moving or a project. I’ve been doing this for years working on the client side for universities, it’s very much a manual process. I have a team of CAD technicians, we try to make sure that they find out when minor works projects or capital projects are happening, remodelling of space etc, we try and keep track of that. They will go out (if they haven’t got as-built drawings), do a survey and redraw the building. But here’s the thing where we are at the moment, they’ll then send an email round to all of the interested parties because of the linked data, not necessarily in the 3D BIM model, but in our VAFM system.

So, the email goes to the people who manage the assets, there might be a new room number involved, it then goes on to the people who manage asbestos just to make sure nothing has moved there, and so on. So, that’s how it’s done currently. We’re looking at possibly using the new CAFM system that we’re implementing to raise like a job ticketing system, so it becomes a ticket in itself for this change. Sp, i guess the answer is that we do our best, but it’s very much a manual process.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, and from what you’re saying you create a new model, if you’ve decided that you wanted to have a Revit model going forward you create a new one.

PAUL EYDEN We’re still working in 2D CAD, to be honest. Maintaining 3D Revits is just not on our radar yet.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think that’s a very common situation, but what I’m interested in is just understanding, as Pierre was saying there the design & construction team are often putting quite a lot of effort into producing a finished, detailed model. And actually that last 10 or 20% of making sure that every actuator has been modelled and doing, for example, point clouds to check to see if everything has been positioned exactly as it was in the BIM model. The thought is that that’s going to be used by asset teams, and in my experience it isn’t and I’m just testing my knowledge of that, but I think that’s the case.

PAUL EYDEN I don’t think it is yet, it’s coming, but it’s about having the right tools for the FM teams for it to become business as usual. It’s not business as usual yet, it’s still in the realms of the sort of high-tech solutions for the people on the ground.

PIERRE VENTER Just a contribution here, I’m using the term placeholder and I think one of the things about the way that we model, we get asked to produce these amazing models, like a Coke bottle, it’s fully detailed with information etc. That in fact could be replaced by a cylinder of the right geometry and perform just as well, but from a design point of view as an architect’s practice we use that for doing the renderings and the visuals because it fulfils two processes. But the bigger part for me is that when we dome to doing validation of the models, that original geometry…actually worked perfectly and right the way through that is, in my mind, one of the most efficient ways of actually doing the modelling because the data is held by a container.

And the data can be held externally so it’s as efficient as possible. And equally it means that through the lifetime there is a placeholder that can be used for doing any one of the validations, connecting it up to the BMS system. But I think there is an already more important part is that it’s not the BMS system that’s going8 to define all of these things because the data can be packaged in anyway. I think it’s interoperability that we need to have. Because every single party along the way, the more information we’ve got the better people can draw the information that they require and feedback.

GEORGE STEVENSON I agree.

PIERRE VENTER So that really is I think, you’ve got a big tin full of things, it’s maintained by different people, they are owners up to a point, they then hand it over, and it means that that can be populated and maintained ongoing.

GEORGE STEVENSON What I really want to work through on this, clearly there’s 35 people that have signed up to this and there’s probably going to be another 50 that watch this. So, what I’m interested in is you obviously signed up to it because you think this is an important topic. What I’d like to do is see how we can get this group to become adequately expert in what’s needed, so that we can become a bit more of a movement of pushing this out into the industry. Because I think that we’re probably maybe in the top 5% in the industry that recognises something needs to change. So, my question is how many of you would like to look at this from a pilot perspective, how can we look at analysing what’s working and what isn’t.

I know that Ana Matic, for example, she’s involved with projects where some of them are quite complex. I can imagine that some of your owners, in particular data centres and things like that, are there things that we could do as a team to maybe look at what is working and what isn’t working? So that we can the get-through some of the myths of what’s been doing at the moment. The digital asset capture, the work that we’ve been doing over the last 3 or 4 years shows me that that is a very practical way of creating an as-built model. Now, it’s informed significantly through the existing BIM process, but at the end of the day, I think there is somebody on the call from Tommy Clarke.

Ian, as an M&E contractor, how many of your projects would you finish, do you have the scope to finish all of the as-built M&E installations to the level of detail that you need from an asset management perspective?

IAN GARWOOD We’ve got a call tomorrow and one of the things I was going to discuss with you was actually it’s quite disappointing to hear the number of the people on the call talk about how disappointed they are in the information that they receive in terms of as-builts and general information. Because certainly speaking from T Clarke’s perspective it’s one of the things that we go to great lengths to try and provide, actual as-built drawings based on the feedback from site based on reality capture, based on good old-fashioned pen markups and so on. And also the data itself which is a whole other story, I guess. But we do put a lot of effort into that.

GEORGE STEVENSON I hope you don’t think that I was saying that you don’t. The frustration I’ve got is that I know there’s huge amounts of effort have gone into this, but for all sorts of reasons that part of the golden thread is breaking.

IAN GARWOOD Yeah, without going into too much detail now, I’ll discuss it with yourself tomorrow and maybe further down the line, there is a breakdown in communication. It’s been mentioned quite a few times about this needs to be driven right from the start from the client, everybody needs to be around the table and there needs to be a concerted effort right from the start. But we haven’t always found that that’s the case from our perspective and obviously that has an impact on us and what we can deliver and how effective we can be in delivering that.

GEORGE STEVENSON Let me give you an example, we were asked on Friday by a contractor to see if we could help them with a job that they’re bidding. On this particular one the client has issued to them a set of 2D drawings and the client needs a 3D model created. When we actually looked at the drawings, they actually came from Revit. So, we said why are you asking for a 3D model to be created? They said, well, the clients told us that we won’t get the models. We said what are you actually asking for? What the client is asking for is borderline impossible. Ian’s company probably could interpret drawings and schedules and elevations and things to guess where the M&E is going to go, but that’s absolute madness, in my view.

But it’s because the client has commissioned, it’s a procurement thing I think, the designers haven’t been commissioned to provide the models. And then to turn around to the contractor and say can you retrospectively create a model. I said do you need the model to build it? And they said no, we’ve been doing that for years. So therefore, wait until the end and we can use photogrammetry to create a proper as-built model, but that’s not what the client has asked for. So whoever's advising the client is giving them bad advice, in my view.

PHILIP HANNABUSS One of the things that I find a lot is that people just don’t know the information or systems that they have are available to them. And there is this translation of data from one thing to the nest into companies, specifically large companies. At my former company we had so many different silos of information within the teams that when you went on to the asset management team they didn’t even know that half of the information existed. And one of the biggest problems there is communication, people just don’t talk to each other like we used to. There’s a reliance on process and emails and cover my arse emails that say I’ve told you this is here, and nobody ever just talks and says what do we need.

Because we’re not following the true methodology of information management and I see the chat talking about this a lot as well. Information management should mean that everything is accessible to everybody, whether it’s an RFI, a procurement order, a change to a drawing, it should be accessible to everybody. And that doesn’t mean it’s sent to a selected group on an email, it is in a process on the system. We’re still relying on emails, we don’t follow processes properly and we don’t communicate enough as an industry.

KEVIN BAYLISS I just wanted to share what I’ve been doing at Wolverhampton over the last year. Wolverhampton Homes have a number of sites, social housing that obviously they’re maintaining at the moment and they’ve got various ones where they’re doing new works and a programme of upgrading. So, as part of that they asked us to look at how do we get their digital path to get better maintenance and make sure they can respond and use the models for the data and so on. Right from the design teams, all the way through to how they’re using it and how they’re going to do that. So, we’ve got all of the design teams working away and what became apparent was some of the design teams know 1960? 1964? 1hr 22mins 25secs quite well, and some don’t.

Contractors in that sector in terms of doing more refurb type works are not quite attuned to it in the same way as a new build construction team would be, it might be more second nature to them. The clients themselves and the asset teams and then there’s very much a challenge within their own departments to say actually how do I educate people in departments to understand actually we need to jump on this proposal. We really want to have a look at how files are structured, how can we make it more consistent, what information do we need to know. So, it’s been a whole journey working with them and we’re still working with them, and we’ve tried to utilise that whole information that we can then have the right data and to use possibly something like Active Plan to link with their AIM systems.

That’s what we’re doing at the moment and what I’ve also done because some of the things that we’re doing on the design at the moment are HRB applications. We’ve been doing a lot about competencies, set up some templates and working with the client pretty much writing their policies for them around that. And I’ve been writing the golden thread one in terms of how potentially their systems could work and I know to follow things which starts with folder structure and then…how it goes from a work in progress system right the way through to a golden twist system that they must hold. So, we’re some way down that journey at the moment and that’s something that’s going to continue and hopefully there’ll be some really good stuff that comes out of that.

ANA MATIC Just a quick one on your very important point about BIM and procurement. A lot of projects will not require you to submit models, but it’s not just that, it’s also that a lot of clients don’t understand the difference between originated files and files that are safe to share. We’re trying to do a lot of upwards and sideways education of not just clients, but also project management teams and entire project teams in fact to understand what type of information do they actually require. Because we have such a varied experience. On some projects, we found that our Revit files have been shared with absolutely everyone and then used again without any permission, that’s one extreme. And then on other projects they’ll be a very neat set of files that you can quickly convert into a forge view, really useful to use.

And no one has actually thought to advise the client that maybe this would be quite a good resource for them to ask for. So, we have very, very extreme examples, even within the similar sectors. So again, what I’m trying to say is instead of this group being a moaning group i think we should be the group that’s creating simple diagrams that we can share with our clients to say guys, now is your moment to decide, it’s going to cost you this much extra to do this. Ask your team to give you a simple model, as they’re doing their construction files that you can then use for your handover at the end. And the put this into your procurement, put this into your tender, all of these things are key points in time when they need to happen.

If they don’t happen, it’s gone and then we have to do it in a much longer way. So, if we could come up with a cheat sheet that would be perfect.

GEORGE STEVENSON That brings me on to one of my thoughts in terms of what we’re saying here. I agree with what Phil was saying earlier that we don’t talk to each other adequately. I’m thinking that within this community we’ve got a huge amount of knowledge and experience. What might make sense is for us to set up a WhatsApp group and therefore be able to share ideas, I don’t know if people would think that’s a worthwhile thing to do. All you’ve got to do is, it doesn’t need a lot of administration from my point of view, but I’ve not done this before. If you’re interested in joining a WhatsApp group maybe put your telephone number in the chat along with your name.

PAUL SHEEDY Briefly on that last point you’re making about getting a standardised solution. I’m very much talking with the insurance sector trying to get them, what we do in an evacuation we know exactly where everybody is in the building, we know exactly how they’re evacuated through the building in real time, we do predictive analysis. What I’m trying to do now with the insurance sector is say if you have this i place, we will cut your insurance premiums down. So, I’m thinking now if we think between us the ideal scenario for a building that has a perfect golden thread, the insurance company has access to it, offer that carrot and stick. If you have got a clear golden thread and the insurance company knows it’s being run correctly, then your premiums come down as well. So any suggestions, get back to me.

DAVID CAREY I put on the chat that a LinkedIn group could be of more benefit of the basis that one of the opportunities you have you know who is talking on this group. And exchanges within LinkedIn can be exchanged visually, you can leave messages as well. So, I would suggest that might be more productive than just a dedicated WhatsApp group.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think they’re for different purposes. The reason I’m saying about WhatsApp is I’m part of something called Zero Construct which has grown very well. And one of the beauties of it is it’s the interaction, it’s the immediacy, whereas with LinkedIn, I use LinkedIn all of the time and it’s excellent, but it’s for a slightly different purpose. So, I think we do both.

DAVID CAREY Well, the fact that you’re doing this on Teams, there’s a lot of functionality and most people have got it already as a n application installed. And we are all probably as guilty of not using its full functionality which is all of the additional parts of the application. So, the counter argument to what I suggested on LinkedIn or even on WhatsApp is to make better use of the chat function when we’re not on the call using the same Teams group as you’ve organised this.

GEORGE STEVENSON Well, let’s try it and if you are interested in joining a WhatsApp group put your name down, we’ll see if it works. What we want to do is to actually engage with you all, so what I’ll probably do over the next couple of weeks is reach out to you, or you can contact me, and we can talk through how…at the end of the day this is about you need to get something out of this because you’ve dedicated an hour and a half (and quite a lot more than that) in doing this and we need to make sure that we’re achieving something.

RICHARD FREER You mentioned a pilot, have you got something specific in mind for that?

GEORGE STEVENSON Yes, what I think we should do is have a process that we can actually trial on some jobs that people are working on. So, if you’ve got projects where the golden thread is maybe part of that, what we’d like to do is see whether there is a way that we could utilise that and learn from it.

RICHARD FREER So, if anybody is interested and they’ve got projects that are relevant to that, put ‘pilot’ in the chat.

GEORG STEVENSON Not just whether they’ve got a project, or whether they might be interested in reviewing a project, or contributing to a project. This is more about knowledge sharing and the example that was made earlier about the things that go wrong, so that we can actually learn from that and make sure that we can try and engineer them out.

JONATHAN AKISANMI A quick point and that is in the background Kevin and I were in a small chat because we’re from the same organisation. And one of the things we were talking about is the question of the pipeline project for the industry. From the point he raised with regards to Wolverhampton Homes, this is the intent, so I think it’s useful to probably raise that with him, so perhaps already have a project in hand that could be of interest. While we were chatting the consideration was, for example, let’s assume if there is a government project that is open we could actually be considering having a full spectrum of implementing information management to that extent from start to finish. And this could actually serve as a pilot project to the entire industry which we could look as a mirror. And then we can all learn from and go on from there to make future projects.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s a very interesting idea, I’m just wondering how that might be pulled together because if we’re talking about it being a real project then there’s going to be all sorts of procurement things there.

JONATHAN AKISANMI Yeah, it would involve every aspect. I think the important thing is I’ve been involved with this for some time and we’ve done a lot of talking about this and there were so many things I could have said in the course of time. I think we’ve probably come to that threshold where we really need to see something for real, particularly following the BSA which has more or less dynamically changed aspects of how we manage information on the projects. My thinking is that that’s one level which we all have not seen, while we have not even been achieved sufficiency in the traditional BIM from the days of the PAS 1192 and so on. We’ve got to 19650 and now we’re talking about golden thread at that level.

We probably just need a pilot project where we look at all of the aspects and as we go along we’re all learning8 from this and being able to replicate that in future projects. Of course it may not include all of the segments of the spectrum, but at least we’ll know what it looks like. It’s like when you say what does good look like, this is what it looks like.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s a really interesting suggestion, so can I float something past everybody. There’s been a huge amount of effort in the design and construction phase to get those processes right, but I think we’re agreed that there’s not really anywhere near the level of commitment gone in to the operations phase. So, what I’m thinking Jonathan, if there are projects where they have been completed and they’re good ones, like Ian Garwood was saying there with Tommy Clarkes, there’s probably projects, Ian, if you’ve been doing that work then probably your colleagues have done a good job as well.

But what we could perhaps do is look at things from the other end of the telescope, so start with maybe digital asset capture 360 photos of the finished building, and then start to work back up the tree to say OK, what information have we got, how is it structured and then how could we make sure that we’ve got something that then is demonstrating significant financial value to the client and therefore it pushes it back up the line. Is that something that might make sense?

JONATHAN AKISANMI I agree, that’s the kind of thing and I think it’s just at the point where we need to commission going just beyond the idea as in formulations. Just, for example, from the way you’ve explained.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, there’s hundreds, probably thousands of projects that have been delivered and people have put a huge amount of effort into them. And then at the end they’re not being used. So, here’s a way that we as a collective might be able to come at it from the other perspective and deliver some real value quite quickly. Because then we’re not waiting for 4 years for something to get built.

JONATHAN AKISANMI I can’t think of immediate reference projects, for example, right now that are completed, even though there can be a few. Without going back to check what is possible. But I think maybe one approach could be I’ll talk to Kevin gain and maybe we can bring this forward.

GEORGE STEVENSON I do agree with what you’re proposing, all I’m saying is that in parallel with that if we come at it from one way and then come at it from the other angle, then we’re likely to be delivering some real value quite quickly. Photogrammetry and 360 photographs, Paul Collyer does that sort of thing that might be a way of delivering something that is then tangible. We’ve then got something where the FM people can actually be coming engaged and understand why it is, they’ll probably do all of the moaning still saying that we don’t have this or we don’t have that, but we can then find ways of identifying what’s really important and what is less important.

JONATHAN AKISANMI I think all of the big challenges from the FM side, there are two key factors here, the clients actually having a particular need or requirement. Before the BSA it wasn’t a big issue because often times you would probably see specifications around the maintainable assets and things like that. But no one is probably talking so much about, except maybe like in some major buildings like the real big money high-rise buildings where the glazing and the external shells are developed fully in BIM and also tagged and identified and maintenance data and the rest of them are collected. Often times we only see maintenance assets like…stuff. The point is, now that we have a consideration around details, fire safety and the rest of them.

OK, that’s on one hand. The second thing is the fact that for asset management particularly we don’t have platforms or softwares that are comprehensive enough to actually manage the kind of outputs we produce from the design and the construction stages. So, it’s something we could trigger for the development in that area, but I don’t necessarily see that happening all of a sudden because you would need segments of the sector who are interested in developments to support that. The most I have seen in terms of asset management so far, like BIM technologies, would often times be involved with the client from the beginning through the end and they’ve included the kind of information they required during the design and construction stages.

And they have a platform to manage some of the assets, also on behalf of the client, at that point, so I don’t think we have many of such in the industry yet. I know there’s still a long way to go, there are still a few things to do, but my argument is just the fact that to have a consolidated development around the design and construction area, where the information could instigate or trigger for the development to support the client in managing the assets to that extent. So, I’m not exactly sure whether it’s something that’s going to happen now.

GEORGE STEVENSON Let’s explore it, I think that’s a rally good suggestion.

PIERRE VENTER I think the idea that Jonathan’s come up with, basically a model and be able to test it. The really important part is that you need a couple of devil’s advocates to actually challenge some of those things, Equally, I’m thinking about Jonathan talking about there is no one comprehensive system and I think that’s just a pragmatic thing. There is never going to be one programme that does absolutely everything. But what’s really important is for us to identify the key things that need to be transferred interoperably from one platform to another, one package to another. And that essentially is the data that’s required throughout the whole project.

And in a way, if I can use a couple of analogies, it’s like having a set of tags. What are you getting? What are you handing over? And whether it’s populated, so there’s a set of mechanism behind there to validate the data that’s going in. And that’s where things like ideas etc start to come in. So, there is the injection of what technologies could be use, which applications would be of benefit, and equally Jonathan raises the one thing which is if the client is the one who is leading it, i’m sure that 90% of the projects would be running 10,000 times better.

One, because we’d be able to say you can’t have that without paying for it. In other words, people would now do it because they are getting paid for it and they’re getting paid a fair amount. And I’m just finding too often that the payment issue is what actually crops what we’re actually going to deliver. Things like design built, I’m not going to detail anything that’s going to be redone later, I promise you, it doesn’t make sense, ii’s like the placeholders. And I think contractually some of these might just be things that we challenge.

GEORGE STEVENSON If you’re interested in those pilots put your name down and we’ll get you involved. And if you know of projects where they've completed, but there may be a way of revisiting them, to add some value to them, that’s a really good one for us to work on. So, if you’ve any ideas on as-builts, maybe put as-builts in the chat.

PIERRE VENTER Final thing, it’s about the NDAs. I did work for a company that was doing large numbers of malls. As a project type, it’s really important to identify some of these by project type. But the part that I’ve done is to go and take whatever I can, anonymise it and start looking at the performance issues, In other words, how much did we put in, what did we plan at the beginning and what did we actually get done at the end?

Because I’m finding too often that we don’t put enough information, we can’t get that early this is how big is should be and then be able to tie these things up. We’ve got no benchmarks, unfortunately8, but maybe I’m speaking out of turn on that. And that’s one of the limitations, NDAs on some of these things are just not going to be happening, which means that we’re all losing, sadly.

CHAT

Piotr Bytnar (External) Yesterday 04:03 pm

In the case of curtain walls, these are hung off of the storey above with seals working with the movement of the building 15-20mm (it is not mastic). You would lift it with the service crane if possible, and the panels would be typically 250-300kg but could be larger.

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:05 pm

There are huge skill gaps in the Built sector if I may say so

How many FM teams know and use 3D information?

Joe Stott (External) Yesterday 04:05 pm

How long does it take designers to be competent in BIM Authoring ? (Years) and this is when its one of our primary fee creating tools. We can never expect FM teams to do the same unless it is a full time role?

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:06 pm

Let's talk about ISO 19650 naming conventions for handed over 2D Handover information

Piotr Bytnar (External) Yesterday 04:07 pm

I would say we look at it backwards. Data is important, the 3D model is just the representation.

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:07 pm

Does an FM person understand the numbering convention using during construction phase?

My point is that the maturity level in some organisations client side can be an issue

Justin Gillard (External) Yesterday 04:09 pm

The as-built AIM is ideally the ongoing source of all managed asset files and records. That requires those handover files to be edited with the associated software and user skills. Consultancies can provide this service on demand

Adey Badmos (External) Yesterday 04:09 pm

So far we have not received quality BIM to date. However, I can confirm that the information provided in As built and O&M are being used.

Bayliss, Kevin (Unverified) Yesterday 04:09 pm

We are educating the client at Wolverhampton Homes and there asset teams on 19650 because they don't, but we also have to educate their framework contractors

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:10 pm

Many organisation won't even allow freeware to view 3D information, talk less

Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) Yesterday 04:10 pm

If we talk COBie data or ISO19650 to operational colleagues I get a very blank response. But from some explanation they get the point quickly

Piotr Bytnar (External) Yesterday 04:11 pm

You can have a model as a geometrical boundary set in space with the data attached to it - (space identification) it does not need to be software-specific. We need to make it simple, and trackable and changes to databases can be easily managed. See - GIT for software development.

Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) Yesterday 04:12 pm

As a client I concur. It's important to build up good digital and data skills within client organisations

Philip Hannabuss (External) Yesterday 04:12 pm

Would a terminology change be beneficial, Should the the EIR be specifying a requirement of an As-Built Model over a as built drawings?

Justin Gillard (External) Yesterday 04:12 pm

That is a cultural issue that is a temporary barrier when the issue is understood and the work handled under NDA for example.

Phull, Pav Singh (External) Yesterday 04:12 pm

Is there a benefit to creating guidance for change management post creating a Golden Thread / Digital H&S file document? How do we check for multidiscipline design change impacts?

Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) Yesterday 04:13 pm

This is why we use ArcGIS, it is still complex to set up but we can hub more data than you can in Revit. It makes it more usable for operational colleagues

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:13 pm

From experience EIRs can be well written but mean nothing because they don't prescribe. They are just generalist at best.

Philip Hannabuss (External) Yesterday 04:14 pm

Thats my point... if we change the terminology it changes the thought process and means we need to specify more clearly the terms being used.

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:15 pm

I would prescribe, share, take feedback, iterate, repeat. Until it works and it sticks.

Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) Yesterday 04:15 pm

Stop calling it BIM, and just talk about Information Management

Akisanmi, Jonathan (Unverified) Yesterday 04:16 pm

Really it's 'Information Management using BIM'

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:17 pm

Information Management is very, very broad and also used outside the Built sector. BIM is understood as 3D if you get what I mean.

Joe Stott (External) Yesterday 04:21 pm

There is so much we can learn from each other (Design team / Operations). Historically these two workstreams have never crossed (other than those trophy projects).

Bailey David (R0A) Manchester University NHS FT (External) Yesterday 04:23 pm

I guess I'm talking from an operational perspective. The 3d model isn't important operationally, you need well organised data that is aligned to fit into CAFM systems. Our approach with ARCGIS is that you can have a 3d model, but combine multiple sources of data

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:23 pm

Philip Hannabuss The siloed information also can't be found because of lack of metadata

Paul Sheedy (External) Yesterday 04:23 pm

Culture Change. The biggest issue we face.

Piotr Bytnar (External) Yesterday 04:24 pm

Ps. BIM in the big boys game is using clients and asset management's lack of understanding as a cause for fee generation under the pretence of sophistication. That is why they do not get involved and want to make it better. Think how to make it pay and they will play.

Philip Hannabuss (External) Yesterday 04:25 pm

this ties in to George Stevenson comments on findability

P T Andrew de Silva (External) Yesterday 04:35 pm

Presentations from AM / FM teams to hear the 'other side' of the story would be good - good and bad experiences...which can inform all of us - I have vey little experience so for me it would be very helpful . Thank you all

Benedicta Anetekhai (External) Yesterday 04:35 pm

Like any discovery session, the first thing people discuss is their current BAU/issues. I think that's what’s happened today. Looking forward to future meetings/knowledge sharing.