The Golden Thread Taskforce
In 2021, the BIM4Housing community was asked to support the Government’s Golden Thread initiative to determine what asset and survey information was required to make new and existing buildings safer.
One of the few positive outcomes of the COVID lockdown was that thousands of industry experts were willing to come together on Teams, often with their competitors, to share their experience and knowledge with the next generation of experts.
This created a collaborative community that has continued to meet regularly, sharing the challenges they are facing on a daily basis and finding ways that Better Information Management can help.
We recorded the meetings, so the context of the knowledge sharing can be reviewed and fed into free guidance - https://bim4housing.com/publications/
In 2024, we established a sister-community, BIM in Asset Management to apply the expertise and resources we had developed for Residential to other building types – and we now have an extended community of building owners - hospitals, universities, schools, offices, historic buildings and prisons.
The new (and old) Regs apply to all of them to a greater or lesser extent, and interpreting what is required of owners/landlords/managing agents and contractors is a real challenge, to the extent that the HSE is reporting that 75% of submissions to the Building Safety Regulator are being rejected because of the supporting information was inadequate.
Tim Galloway deputy director of the Building Safety Regulator said “We’ve rejected plans where the applicant’s own analysis of the smoke control system demonstrated it would put smoke into evacuation routes”
The HSE is asking the Industry to help improve the guidance. Our community is now 3,000 plus of people who have been willing to invest their time learning about the Golden Thread and how it can be delivered – and audited.
At the heart of the Golden Thread is connecting specifications to solutions, assets to systems and the spaces they support, asset types to products and people to competence.
This cuts across traditional silos of professions and work packages, so the cross-industry community within BIM4Housing and BIM in Asset Management is well-placed to help.
We have formed the Golden Thread Taskforce to coordinate an industry-wide response to “what does good look like” – not prescriptive, but a guide contractors can use to inform their supply chains and owners/landlords can use to check they have the information they really need.
Our ultimate objective is to make digital/machine-readable as much of the information that is created and managed, to reduce the labour/risk of manual checking.
Although we have many (many) experts in fire safety, building safety, design, construction and asset management, no one person knows everything, so the members of the Taskforce are working as a team to fill any gaps in knowledge – and provide coordinated and impartial advice.
Projects will benefit from a commonly agreed baseline for required information, that can be audited.
Many information managers are wrestling with colleagues awareness of why they need to improve the information that is being produced so, at the last Forum meeting on the 14th May 2025, we conducted a survey to understand the need for better Golden Thread Awareness.
This was an informal, non-scientific survey, but of people who are at the coalface.
All questions and answers relate to HRBs in England and Wales.
Observation - Leadership and adequate funding are critical ensuring buildings are safe and, all too often, senior directors who are balancing other priorities may be unaware of the commercial (and perhaps personal) liabilities resulting from incorrect or inadequate information.
In this case, 89% of those surveyed felt their senior management were not fully aware.
Observation – the information required to ensure fire safety is defined in Building Regulation 38.
In this case, 92% of those surveyed didn’t believe projects they were working on would deliver the required fire safety asset information.
Observation – Once delivered, the information must be regularly checked and updated with any changes.
In this case, 43% of those surveyed didn’t believe their organisation is doing that.
Observation – The O&M files should include information that is crucial to building safety and operational performance, yet there has been an historic issue with the records being updated. In this new Regulated world, that takes on a new level of importance. So, once delivered, the information must be regularly checked and updated with any changes.
In this case, 72% of those surveyed didn’t believe their organisation is doing that.
Observation – This may seem an unnecessary question because it seems obvious that a fire risk assessor would first read the fire and emergency file (FEF), but there is not yet an explicit standard for an FRA, or a qualification of competence, so there is a risk price driving a race to the bottom.
In this case, 95% of the group believes that FRAs should include the FEF check as standard.
Observation – Again, an apparently an unnecessary question because the requirement for a floor plan is clear in the legislation, but we commonly find there is no such plan with coordinated asset information – rather hundreds of individual plans that people have to interpret.
In this case, 100% of the group agreed there should be a floorplan.
Observation – Findability is important for any safety-critical information and the Fire & Emergency file should include everything the Responsible and Accountable persons need to manage the building safely.
92% of the group agreed that is should be “in” the FEF i.e. not require people to spend hours/days searching through folders of work packages in O&Ms.
Observation – Most people are struggling to interpret some aspects of the regulations, so this very common question was asked of the group. There is clearly a contextual dimension to this question, but it sparked the discussion and a useful knowledge exchange.
55% of the group opted for “No” but, after a discussion, most agreed that it is a “Yes” even if it is like for like (for which you may need evidence) and even if it is an emergency, it was felt that the Regulator must be later informed.
Observation – we have specialists in most areas and this smoke control question split the room.
Only 20% of the group got the right answer on this.
Observation – Given this group included people who are able to offer independent consultancy on these matters, this answer may not be surprising.
However, 75% of the group felt those auditing the information should be cushioned from the commercial pressure of the project – able to take a similarly impartial view to the Regulators.