Schools Estates Special Workshop Meeting 01-08-2025

SCHOOLS ESTATES SPECIAL WORKSHOP MEETING, 01-08-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON If somebody shows is something that they then ask us to edit it out, we’ve got a little bit of control. So, if you’re using an AI notetaker, I can see there’s two on at the moment, if you can switch them off that will be helpful. The other thing is that we want people to be attending the meetings, not sending a bot on to record it all for them. Because the key thing for this is engagement. I understand the efficiency of doing it, but we’ve had a couple of people being then a little bit guarded about what they say because it’s not something that we can cover. And if you weren’t aware, we record every meeting and we do a transcript from that as well. So, you’ve got a pretty good job.

Thanks to everybody for joining. The reason we’ve set this up is that we’ve had quite a few comments or conversations in the last couple of weeks with people that are delivering schools. They’re either doing new build schools or there’s a lot of work going on at the moment doing retrofits, putting solar panels in and also doing other types of improvements to schools. And with all of that investment that’s generating more and more new asset information that needs to be captured. The challenge, to some extent, is that at the schools level there’s often not the technical expertise, especially in a standard school, to be able to take a lot of the information that’s being handed over.

And the other aspect of that is that the information that is being procured by certainly the department, is very detailed. And a lot of the information is really still design information when we actually look at it. So, as far as BIM In Asset Management is concerned, our perspective is on the asset management side of things. And what we want to try and do is avoid asset teams being overloaded with a lot of information that they don’t need. And also then they can’t audit it or check it. And if people are producing information and then there is nobody checking it at the other end, then there’s all sorts of opportunities for things to go wrong. I want to talk through some of the methods at the moment that are being used to deliver schools. And I don’t know how many people on the call are involved in that. Lewis, could you explain what you do?

LEWIS DUELL I’m an information manager at BIMBox. We review the model files against the client’s EIRs, essentially what the DfE are looking for within their models, we check that that information is compliant.

GEORGE STEVENSON You’re part of Space Zero, is it?

LEWIS DUELL Yes, we work very closely with ? 4 mins 22 secs and Space Zero.

GEORGE STEVENSON So you do a lot of schools, certainly they do a lot of schools.

LEWIS DUELL Yes, between 40-50% of the works that we get in are new build schools. We get a couple of the refurbs and retrofits, but it’s mostly the new builds. Wayne is our CEO and we’ve got Chris Crooks as our Managing Director.

GEORGE STEVENSON We worked with Wayne as Active Plan on the Building Schools for the Future programme. That was largely FF&E, is that still the case? Or are you doing a lot more than that now?

LEWIS DUELL Space Zero, they specialise in the FFE design, pulling together the layouts for that and getting that data. And we’re across the board, any type of data. So we essentially work on the lead appointed party side, the client side.So we’ll work with the lead contractors to make sure that the project is getting delivered, as per what the DfE is looking for. and just check that the information that the contractor’s are receiving is as compliant as possible, providing that additional tech support to make sure that it’s developed in line with the programme.

GEORGE STEVENSON So, who would you normally be working for?

LEWIS DUELL We work mostly with the likes of Morgan Sindall, Toby Douglas, Galliford Try, Bowmer and Kirkland, the lead contractors on those projects.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, so they engage you as the information manager for the project.

LEWIS DUELL Yes, they’ll engage us form usually RIBA 3 right through until RIBA 5, RIBA 6 handover, just making sure that everything is going in perfectly and as easy as possible for that handover process.

GEORGE STEVENSON OK, that’s really helpful. Is there anybody else involved in delivering schools on the call at the moment?

BRONWYN Not currently, but we have been in the past and we’re looking for the future.

MO SHANA’A That’s delivering, but the software that’s being used on a lot of schools and prisons are probably the two biggest sectors. And we’re involved on a range of sites, we’re involved on some of the consultants and the client representatives use us. Some of the Tier 1s and design firms use us. And then some supply chain members use us as well. So, we’re seeing it form all angles effectively.

GEORGE STEVENSON Do you want to just explain briefly what Morta does?

MO SHANA’A Morta effectively replaces spreadsheets and documents with connected information hubs that can be configured to meet specific processes. So, many companies use us for things like specifying information requirements, information delivery planning, tracking data against systems like Viewpoint, ACC, Aconnect and so on. Some are using us to create things like O&M manuals, health & safety files, collect COBie data and assure COBie data. So, just a range of information management processes, as well as many other trackers within the industry.

GEORGE STEVENSON What we’re trying to do within BIM In Asset Management is bring together companies like Morta with other range of different software solutions, so that we can deliver far more coordinated information. I wart two hats, I ruin Active Plan as well, which in some ways we’re doing some of the things that Mo’s doing, but we focus really on the asset management side of things. So, we see that what Mo is doing and what a lot of other software companies do in terms of, for example, inspection software, we see that as being complimentary. So, what we’re doing is really bringing together the best of breed applications to be able to deliver the right sort of outcomes. Eleanor, where are you from?

ELEANOR I’m from Waites, I’m not currently working in a schools projects, but I believe I will be working in the future. And I just want to see, I know it has a bigger requirement in terms of being deliverables. I know Mo very well. At the moment I’m working in commercial projects as digital construction manager.

GEORGE STEVENSON What we’re finding is that people are, the supply chain, there’s two elements to this. Existing schools, and obviously there’s thousands of them, it might just be in England there’s 25,000, there’s a substantial range of schools. So, existing schools is something that we’re very interested in. So, we’ve got a wide range of requirements for existing buildings. And obviously Lewis and Eleanor will be involved in delivering presumably new schools and maybe new projects in existing schools and things like that. So, that’s more of a standard BIM process, whereas what we’re doing with existing schools is using methods of data capture using scan to, I’m not going to call it scan to BIM actually, because it’s not BIM.

When you scan and create a 3D model, that’s not BIM, I would say. So, you’re scanning to create a 3D model and then we can enhance that 3D model using 360 photography to hold what those things are. And therefore we end up with something that I would argue is a BIM model because you’ve then got real data to work with. Andrew, you’ve just joined us. To some extent the reason we’ve sparked this off was a conversation we had with David Simpson from Associated Architects and also you about what’s being handed over. And I think you said yesterday that you’ve been able to make some progress with getting a bit fo a rationalised feedback from the department, and from schools presumably, about what you’re handing over. Would you mind just explaining that?

ANDREW SIMPSON The one I was talking about yesterday actually wasn’t a school project, it was a government project, but not a school project. As you’re probably all aware it’s going through the current framework for 26. I know our group team, our hight level team are involved in looking at what the significant changes are, but from what I hear is there’s a few areas haven’t changed we would wish to be changed, but I don’t know the detail at the minute.

GEORGE STEVENSON OK. Well, we as Active Plan have done probably 15, 20 schools and colleges over this last couple of years. And I’ve asked Andrew Handley who leads our work in that area to come in, just to give his practical experience of what is being achieved there. On some of them, they are PFIs, so we’ve got the benefit of working closely with the FM contractor that’s going to receive the schools. So therefore there’s quite some glued together information there. And we’ve also got ones that are not for PFI, they’re normal handed over to the government department in that case.

And then we’re then doing what I think everybody does, is tries to engage with the school to get them to keep it up-to-date. Lewis, are you finding with your work with BIMBox whether the schools are actually using the information that you’re handing over. Are they using it? Are they keeping it up-to-date if you delivered projects a couple of years ago? Are they implementing it?

LEWIS DUELL I’d say on the previous framework, the information wasn’t used quite as much as we’re seeing now. We’re seeing a lot of engagement from the teams of each of the projects and what data they want, what information they’re going to be using that for, but we aren’t seeing if they’re updating that and maintaining it moving forwards. And we’re not seeing what platforms they’re actually pushing that into. So, at the moment it is very much us pushing data in the blind at the moment, we don’t know where that’s going or what that’s being used for.

GEORGE STEVENSON Would it be useful if I showed you the sort of things that we’ve been doing? (shares screen). We’re taking a sort of standard methodology of 19650 process. But what we do, we hold all of the non-geometric data in SQL in the cloud. And we use that to create set of asset information requirements which is machine-readable. So, rather than it being a series of documents that people can simply read or ignore, what we do is put it into a database environment which can also connect to other applications. And that’s one of the areas Mo that I want to talk to you about because that’s an area that you’re very strong in.

But we’ve got a strong application for being able to do that. And we’ve got a product library application which manufacturer’s product data is then put into. And that’s a free product library that has been used now on probably over a hundred projects. So, we’ve got the product information that’s been added by the project teams. And the process that we’re operating is that when a product is selected it’s put into the product library. And I must emphasis that we’re not charging manufacturers for that. We’ve got tools that allow us to connect in with Revit and AutoCAD, so when people are actually designing and building the information they can be connected directly to the data.

So that it means that where information has been set out by the DfE or the client is then connected directly, so they can actually see whether it’s been done properly. It then will produce a digital O&M because we know where everything is, we know what the product was and we know what information was required. So that glues that together and that will then provide an asset information model going forward. So, this is an example that you might have seen this morning. This is actually a university, but it’s the same principle where the model, this model was created by Sisk. And what we’ve done is we’ve made it so that all of the objects, the non-geometric data is held in the database.

So, because it’s held in a database rather than in the models themselves, it means it’s much easier to audit and validate. And it also means it’s much easier for us to connect with other applications. We’ve then got this here which is actually then connecting back to the manufacturer’s product data. So that Grundfos pump, for example, may be used in a school or a college or a hospital or an office or whatever. But this is really one of the key breakthroughs that we’ve had over the last couple of years and that’s we’re not reliant on the models themselves being 100% finished. Because on schools that often doesn’t get done. What we’re doing is we’re able to use 360 photographs. And the 360 photographs complement what was in the model, but they obviously, because they are there, it’s a true as-built.

And the unique thing that we’re able to do is the asset data that was in the model that’s been written to the database, the COBie data, we can then connect to the 360 photo. So, we’ve got a three way connection between the model, the database and the 360. Which means that the intelligence is there, we’re creating smart 360s. That also means that that can then be used to audit what’s being handed over. So, in this case we’ve got the class room. And in the class room we’ve got the asset data, all of the equipment that’s been provided, from what every source, it doesn't have to have been modelled, it can come through from schedules. But it’s all classified as well, so I think that’s a really important point.

And then the FM is then able to use that to go and check that what they’re being told is being delivered has actually been delivered. And they can just check it off what they can see in the 360. So, when they click on that in the 360 you’ll see that it turns green. So, that’s really the sort of process that we’re operating. And then this one here shows how that can be done using a whole estate. This was an interesting one, it was done for the Scottish Futures and it was for an estate, but it was a particular building that was built. But seeing it in the context of the whole estate where they can have documents against individual properties. Because in many cases the requirements, in our experience, of the local team are fairly basic.

They’re looking really at asbestos registers, statutory compliance, which contractors are down to do which work. A simple help desk that they can use, because often they don’t have the money to put a proper CAFM system in place. What they really need to know is what things are, where they are, and then to be able then to interact with that in a simple way, to see for example where all of the compartment walls are. Or to find individual assets. So, to be able to use the information that is coming through, both to see things actually in the model, or alternatively to be able to see them in a simple interactive plan. And the 360s sort of bridge the gap. This was done 4 or 5 years ago, so it’s relatively old.

And the important thing to recognise, there’s probably 15 or 20 models that go to make this up. And each of them has got its own data. But what we’re doing here, we’re connecting it up. We can test it against the information requirements to see whether everything that is requested has actually been provided. But we can also then connect to it things that are in the O&M, so that you can then, in this particular one, you might have a 20-page O&M manual. So, being able to tie back to the right page in the O&M manual for a particular asset or system, it just makes it a lot easier for people to navigate.

So, that’s broadly the sorts of things. I’m going to stop there for people to ask questions. And then I’d like Andrew to talk about how we’re doing it on some live jobs with a couple of contractors in Ireland. Are there any points or questions or observations on what I’ve just shown?

ELEANOR I have a question. I found it very interesting when you say you start with a database and after that you add it to the model. Because I understand the process and that can be probably a game changer in the maintainable assets, how to manage the existing assets. And instead I’m doing the other way round. As you say with the CCCS scan, I’ll take the data and retrofit back to the FM 2. So, could you explain the process?

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, Andrew can do that in a moment, but I’ll just initially say that what we’re doing, the key thing is we’re starting with a master asset library. And that master asset library is of asset types. And those asset types could be going into any building. So, that master asset type library also has, we’ve got a master space library, a master library for systems. And therefore that sort of information can all be connected up before anybody has designed the building. So when the building is then being designed, you’re then able to pick from those libraries which will tell you the information that is required. And again, that may have been all created within Active Plan, or it could have been created in Mo’s Morta system.

And we’re agnostic on that. The key thing is making it easy to do. But the principle is to try and organise as much of this as possible before you start designing. And therefore you’ve got a degree of consistency across all of the buildings. For example, on the ones that we’re doing at the moment in Ireland, wherever possible we’re trying to keep the same information sets and the same asset type references for things, so that at a base level they can all be connected back from an FM perspective. Whereas if on each project, which typically happens now, people call things differently, they might name them slightly differently, then that becomes quite difficult across a whole portfolio, it becomes very manual.

And a final thing, what we’ve done is made it so that that database is connected directly into the models. So, we’re an Autodesk developer so we built APIs, add-ins for Revit and AutoCAD, to be able to make those connections back to the intelligent asset data, which means that it can then be fully audited. But we’ve been involved in schools for 20 years, during the Building Schools for the Future we were dealing with Lewis’ colleagues many years ago. And we were commissioned by the Department for Education to produce the original asset information requirements. And we worked with Beech Williamson and the team at DfE to produce a database driven platform that was actually used on almost 200 schools.

The intention with that was to create really good asset information that could then be used to run the schools. But what then happened, the coalition government run out of money and all of the projects that were supposed to be PFIs or PPPs actually became design & build. And we didn’t have a client, there was nobody to hand the information over to. And the government was really focused at just delivering as many schools as possible. So, a lot of the governance or the structure that we put in place to make all of that happen was a bit lost. But we’ve still got that expertise, we’ve spent a lot of time learning about what was needed in schools. So, we’ve certainly got something to be able to contribute here, with a lot of the other people in the room.

ANDREW SIMPSON I think the main issue of the challenges I find is when you come to the universities and what have you, that’s when it’s different. We’ve got guys in here from BIMBox as well. Sometimes we will have tested the technical assistance, we’re working on behalf of the DfE. The challenge we have is like it’s not standardised across how they are measuring, how the models are 30 mins 11 secs whether to pass or not, basically. We have mixed messages, don’t we Lewis?

LEWIS DUELL Yeah, depending on what tiers you have, what contractor you’re working with and what end user you’ve got, the requirements are different, they’re checking it in different ways. And even the KPIs that you need to get through to the next stage, they differ depending on who’s checking it.

GEORGE STEVENSON Is that schools or universities?

LEWIS That’s primary, secondary and colleges.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s been our experience as well. I think you’re absolutely right, if we can get a degree of standardisation in terms of how things are going to be checked and audited, then that would be immensely helpful. Some people on this call will be aware of the work that we’re doing within BIM In Asset Management around Regulation 38 and fire safety. But what we’re trying to do there is to get a standardised way of checking Regulation 38 compliance. Because this is a legal and statutory duty that everybody that’s involved should be doing properly.

And if they sign off a declaration to say that they’ve got all of the information, they legally have to sign off a declaration to say that they’ve got everything that they need to keep that building safe from a fire perspective. But almost nobody has got the information that they need. That’s been our experience. And it’s going to really start biting people. So, what we’re trying to do is to within the community have subject matter experts who can say what’s important and what isn’t. So that again, looking at the DfE requirements Andrew, rather than maybe zoning in on a particular attribute that’s not been provided or something like that, we need to be able to step back and say what’s important.

And it’s difficult to you as Bowmer and Kirkland or Waites to go back to the department and say well, we don’t actually think that you need this. The fact that you’ve had a consultant tell you that you need it, we don’t think you need it. You can’t really easily say that. But as a collective of people that are delivering schools that’s coming from somebody from an organisation like BIM In Asset Management which is neutral, we can push back, can’t we? So, that was the idea.

ANA MATIC From our experience, both in schools and I know we were talking about other sectors this morning as well. Th less the client is competent or experienced, the more data they seem to require. So, the classic is basically first time clients who are managing an estate or even just one building, will ask for absolutely everything. And social landlords are terrible, schools are terrible. Some universities are doing a lot of work to try and understand what they actually need. The University of East England is a brilliant case study and they’re spending a lot of time and effort to systemise their estate.

But generally clients who are only doing a one off building or who have only just started on this journey will ask for absolutely everything. And absolutely everything is just a pond of data that they later don’t do almost anything with. So, I totally agree with you George, I think really where our expertise will be mostly useful is unpicking all of that and saying to the client look guys, really you all need a good set of plans, a good set of scans. And then a basic set of maintainable assets that you really, really need to maintain. And start from that and then fill in the gaps. Don’t try and hit everything in the first moment because actually really it just becomes data for the sake of data. I’m sure I’m saying everything that people already know, but I think schools are no different, basically.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s perfect actually, I’d like to hand over to Andrew because what you said there feeds perfectly in with Andrew’s ethos of basically going from the term that he uses all of the time is baby steps.

ANDREW HANDLEY That’s 5 years ago, we’ve moved on from baby steps now, we’ve all grown up a bit. Ana’s entirely right, it’s one of my favourite cultural references that you ask what do you want and it’s like the end scene from the film Leon, ‘send everyone’. It’s like literally that’s the answer that you normally get is I just want everything because I don’t want to have to think necessarily. That is the biggest challenge is engaging to say to have a conversation about what you want. (shares screen). So, George described many different parts. We’re going to focus on the workflow, the steps through the earliest information requirements, how that links in to the project information model.

And we’ll maybe look at the product library as well. The examples we’re going to use are Irish education. One is a school which was a framework agreement, so a fairly traditional contract. If we were releasing that to here it may be JCT, it may be NEC, it maybe D&B, because it wasn’t under a PFI agreement. And the other is a university which as I understand it is PFI style, they call it a PPP. The first school that we’re going to look at is the Edmund Rice College, Carpenterstown. I find that a lot of places in Ireland is you’ve got names that reflect what perhaps was done there at one point. We’re actually working on a project at the moment that the place is called Presentation, which caused huge confusion early days.

So what we do on this project is saying to the education authority what do you require? That’s broken down from standard BIM methodology into the constituent worksheets within COBie as a framework, as a schema. Facility, contact floor, spaces, asset types. Asset types is where people tend to focus. George did mention we’re going to have a library for spaces floors. The reality is that most people just check this one, just set a default because their requirements for a space are the same regardless of what the space might actually be. Tend to find in hospitals by medical facilities, yes, you might get into particular requirements for a particular space, so you have a lamina flow lab special suppression bay maybe, but something like a school the spaces are all the same.

So, the contractor reflected back to the client here’s a list of what is going to be in the building, from what we know from the design, and said these are the requirements. The client said OK, gave feedback, so we went with that. So, we have different asset types, CO2 sensors, CCTV, you can see we have all of the required fields. We have the classifications, hopefully in every case. And in this kind of project what ties it all together is actually the classification. It allows when the project has been done, those classifications are followed so the requirements and the information can be linked together to test have you delivered what was actually required. At least that’s the principle. Almost more importantly it shows people what isn’t required. We don’t need to know the colour of the boiler, we don’t need to know the shape of it, as what Ana was saying let’s focus on the really important things.

So don’t just say I want everything, tell us the things you really do need. And this was the contractor helping the client saying look, this is what we believe that you actually need and this would be a big step forward. That extends into the likes of the coordinates. What we’re seeing here is the asset requirements in terms of type component. It’s all of them, they’re grouped together here because we discovered over time this was an easier way to engage with clients was to say these are your asset requirements. It became a blocker, we said what do you want to know about the type? What do you want to know about the component? We spent too much time trying to explain the difference between a type and an instance.

And we were getting lost in language that perhaps people who are actively engaged in BIM workflows are very familiar, to the client they weren’t. So how is that then applied within the project information model? We’ve got to look at the same facilities, in this case the names actually match. And down here we have the requirements. So, we have here the actual facility, so if we look at the categories we have everything grouped by its classification, by its category. We have the types for air terminals and diffusers, there’s 15 of them. And there’s a check column here, so we’re getting a percentage while we’re looking at those types through the categories. If I look in the actual requirements we then see those requirements from the air. So, the air is linked to the project information model.

And then we see how many asset types it has picked up automatically. So now this is the reality is although you may use the classification in Uniclass, you still end up with 140 out of the total number of types. So, it’s 311 different types, so that means roughly a bit under half ended up using a different classification. So, they haven’t matched perfectly. It’s in our Beta version, we now use the structure of the numbering to say to users I’ve got a partial match, are we in the right area? Do you want to use this as the requirements? Because trying to believe that people are always going to use exactly the correct classification is maybe slightly ambitious. The ambition ultimately is to use the air directly in the authoring tools so you are directly using what the requirements are, not having to use things like the classification manager in Revit.

if someone has produced the requirements we should be giving it to people to use when they’re actually producing the information. But we can go into that match and actually say actually these should be so had more CO2 sensors. I could go and pick available things that haven’t been matched and add them in. I’m not going to do that live, and also this is a real project, I don’t want to mess someone’s project up. The other example I wanted to show is more recent, higher education bundle 1 which are technical universities 6. This is through PFI style contact and delivery. The issue here was we could not get the company who are going to operate the buildings to make a decision about the asset information requirements down to an actual asset type level.

The best we could achieve was grouping them by risk rating, from critical through to generic fabric. I think there was a level 7 which was there isn’t any, but there wasn’t any to share on this list. So here we’re having to use the air to apply that back into the PIM where we actually have things classified. The other thing they provided was extensive lists of asset codes that they wished to actually have assigned. So, the delivery team were required to put the facility manager’s asset code against each of the asset types. So, if we look within these, for the critical it still uses the COBie and says for a critical item we require the following information. Then within the PIM if I look at one of the 6 projects and look at the requirements for the asset types it then requires someone to go through and to match up.

What they actually did was they put these codes in against each of the asset types. So we could then do a look up and then assign, we still have 107 on this one which may be the ones that are in GR is 7. But it meant that they could go through and find all of the MEP specific, they could find all the critical, the MEP generic. I think what this did show when we went to review this project was there wasn’t as much critical kit as the facility managers believed there was going to be. So the other thing that was done within this project is if I go to the types, everything has been assigned its product from the product library. So you see this little picture for everything, everything has an image and quite rich information, compared to what we night sometimes see from COBie delivery, say form the architects and maybe the electrical subcontractor.

When you look at the product library tab there is nothing to assign, everything has been assigned. This has been achieved because within the product library that they built for the projects, they included in the attributes the facility manager’s asset code. So, those were added in through the product library. So what we did is we divided up the information requirements through the different people, the players within the project team. So the right people were providing the information at various stages of the project developed. That was also the contractor being quite clever in terms of offloading that onto the actual subcontractors and the people who were doing the installation.

GEORGE STEVENSON The key thing that’s important there is that we’re not asking the people that are producing the BIM models or the designs or even the installations in the model to put that information in. That can be done at a library level and therefore it becomes reusable. And all of this we can make open. So, this isn’t closed to Active Plan, we’re making certainly the product library that can be open. And the information about classification, for example, and the information about how that then ties back into a CAFM system, that can be a collaborative effort that we want to try and encourage people to consider.

ANDREW HANDLEY The last thing that I was going to show is here within the product library, this is a product library for Irish educational projects. There are sub product libraries that work from the main one. Is there still a check going on about the requirements? This is where that criticality rating falls down, it’s because we’re not able to, as we would with Uniclass, say at this work stage these are the requirements. So, if this was using that more traditional accurate approach, these would probably be saying 100%. But the fact they’re not 100%, what happens is the information here when it’s added into here, gives us…we’re seeing 100% because the information has been added through from the product library.

So, let’s say there was 50% of it here in the BIM, the product library was completed and this door closer was linked in, that other 50% is coming from the product library. Hey presto, we have 100% where it matters in the PIM in the project information model, ready to hand it over as the asset information model. So sometimes that also can be a struggle trying to say to the teams the fact that it says 50% isn’t a problem, that’s good. When we add those two things together we get 100%.

GEORGE STEVENSON How does that relate to what you’re doing, Lewis? Is there anything in there that you could contribute?

ANDREW HANDLEY I just wanted to say one thing about the DfE which is we have been asked recently to test the output for projects. And we discovered the DfE weren’t actually testing the output that was being delivered to them. They had a weird bespoke COBie set of requirements and when we actually went back and queried it, what became very apparent was they weren’t even aware that they’d actually asked for additional columns in some of the worksheets. So I think that supports what some other people were saying about clients not necessarily being that well informed about their own requirements.

LEWIS DUELL On the back of what Andrew mentioned there. The new DfE requirements have a number of additional columns in each of the COBie sheets that is above that standard. A lot of the parameters in there, they’re asking for exactly that. They’re asking for everything across the board, every single COBie parameter they need at handover. So, pushing that in there and getting that in, like with the example of a boiler having the colour and the shape of it, it’s just unnecessary within that data, it’s pulling it through the blanket statement. We’ve seen platforms very similar to Active Plan being used to start driving this, the database, linking through to that model.

Obviously we can get a certain element of data into that BIM model, but by the time you get to handover a lot of that becomes obsolete. We’ve seen platforms such as Active Plan, such as eDocuments and Morta being used to try and push that data from the supply chan back through into those models. Or at least be able to link that data together from the databases into that model information. Because having this in the model files, it becomes unusable, it’s very heavy. And the objects that are being used by the delivery teams don’t always reflect what s being delivered onsite as well.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s very helpful. Just to say, Lewis, that we’re working with Morta and we’re also working with eDocuments. So although it may understandably be perceived that we are doing the same thing, we’re not quite doing the same thing.There’s overlap, there’s certainly stuff that Morta is doing that we’re doing, but vice versa there’s things that we’re not doing. So, I think that’s a really important point that you’re making. At the end of the day we want the most pragmatic way of the schools being able to use what’s being handed over. I think that’s the key thing.

LEWIS DUELL Definitely, and it’s trying not to lose that information as well. I think a lot of what the DfE need now is the information within their model files at each of those exchanges. It’s changed from it being a handover deliverable to now an information exchange deliverable. So, a lot of the data that’s getting put into these models is lost when it gets through to handover and it moves on the FM platforms. A lot of the work has to be redone because the information in the data can’t be read effectively from what’s been developed.

GEORGE STEVENSON OK, well that’s an opportunity for us to discuss that because that’s something that we’re able to do very easily. I think it’s just a matter of doing things in a joined up way that people can understand. Because part of the difficulty is that people in the asset management world don’t really understand BIM. And people in the design and delivery side of things don’t really understand asset management and the fact the complexity of asset management. A good example of that is doing maybe fire door inspections and things like that, fire stopping inspections and the like. Increasingly people are checking CO2 levels in classrooms because the air quality has an impact on learning.

And all of these things are done using, normally there would be a specialist come in to do that work. And they’ll use a range of different software applications like Plan Radar and Riskbase etc. for doing that. So, what we’re doing, we’re taking that information and bringing it into a master asset information model so that it’s all glued together. And then whatever software is being used to do, there’s no standard FM system that is being used in schools. And in fact a lot of schools don’t have an FM system, they’re doing it using spreadsheets. The other critical thing is that the O&M documentation, eDocuments for example, they’re very good, I know the guys Lester and Jamie very well. They do a cracking job, but often their information isn’t used after handover, it’s not connected.

RICHARD FREER George, a lot of what you’re saying, I know in other meetings has been quite specific to individuals. Are you going to be doing one-to-ones with people from this group?

GEORGE STEVENSON I think definitely I’ll have a one-to-one with Lewis and I’m already talking to Andrew. And Eleanor as well from the Waites side of things, I’m speaking with Paula Chandler on things. I’d be very interested in talking one-to-one on this because this isn’t about me trying to sell Active Plan. Clearly that’s good if we can get some business out of it, but that’s not my prime motivation. I’ve spent 20 years of my life working on schools to try and improve the quality of information that gets through on schools. And it’s a bit of a passion of mine, to be honest. So, with this if anybody on the call wants to have a 15-minute one-to-one with me on it then just put ‘one-to-one’ in the chat and we can set something up.

Because I think the next step with this, it sounds as though there’s a bit of a consensus that we want to try and have a collective feedback, in a constructive way, back to the department to say you’re asking for these things, but actually nobody is using them. Nobody is an extreme thing, but we want to do that. So, if you want a one-to-one put ‘one-to-one’ in the chat and we can move that forward. I think the thing is here what we want to do is not look at something specifically for schools. But what we want to do is look at things, we were talking this morning on the data centre project and BESA and SFG20 were on the call.

And they’re doing some really good stuff at the moment in mapping classifications. Well, making sure that Uniclass, NRM, SFG20 and other classifications are relatable. And I’m very interested in that, we’ve spent a lot of time working on that over the years. So what we want to try and do, a pump is a pump wherever it’s being used. So, we should be able to collect information about an asset type and then start to map it back to products. The product library tool that Andrew was just talking about there, we’re happy for anybody to use it. So, we’ve got about 7 or 8 thousand products in there at the moment and obviously it’s growing. Especially with the office for product selectors and standards coming out with a lot of things from their perspective. We’ve also got a group called Safety Critical Assets, we met yesterday.

And what we’re going to be doing over the next month or so, there’s different groups, there’s people that are specialists in dampers and ventilation systems. And there’s people that are specialists in sprinkler systems and fire alarms and things like that, and also fire doors. So, there’s a group of specialists looking at the fire door side of things.

MARGARET SACKEY I’ve just put something in the chat. I wasn’t sure if we’ve got anyone here from the Construction Industry Council or the Construction Leadership Group. All of those bodies that represent projects, project managers. As you know, I chair the Institute of Civil Engineers health & safety expert panel, we’re booking you to come and speak to us. But are there people from the project world here? Or is it mainly practitioners in asset management?

GEORGE STEVENSON Andrew is from Bowmer & Kirkland and Eleanor is from Waites. And Ana Maric is from Scott Brownrigg and Bronwyn is from Tetra Tech. So, we’ve got a wide group of people from the industry.

MARGARET SACKEY From the industry, but representing the Construction Industry Council, representing the Construction Industry Leadership Group. Those people that put people to work in projects and make sure that they follow their contracts and follow the employer’s requirements and that sort of thing.

GEORGE STEVENSON I don’t think we’ve got anybody at that heady level yet, but I’m sure that you can plug a few people in. Margaret is running a workshop, the thing that she was talking about, but they’ve got a big event in September that’s got Dame Judith Hackitt speaking. So, does everybody think this is worth carrying forward as a group?

LEWIS DUELL Yeah, I definitely think it’s worth carrying forward. I think some of the insights and some of the thoughts that have been raised are definitely worth further exploration and further discussion.

RICHARD FREER It would be good to have a specifically schools group, we’ve not had that.

GEORGE STEVENSON We’re also doing one on healthcare.

RICHARD FREER So, anybody in here who’s got colleagues or people they know who are working in the education or soon to be healthcare sector, plug them into us. Get them along to the meetings or get hold of one of us and let’s get them onboard and engaged. And let’s get this one to grow.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think the other thing just to say to everybody, this is a big ocean to boil that we’re involved with. And one of the challenges is that the schools are already inundated with requirements and the like. And we’ve got net zero, we’ve got the educational performance, there’s health & safety, fire safety, there’s a whole raft of things that they’re wrestling with. And certainly I would think that school leadership are going to be a bit overwhelmed with all of the things that they’re supposed to be doing. And also from our perspective, where we can help people like Lewis and Andrew and Eleanor is from an asset management point of view, we can then feedback to say this is what is important.

But really, I think more relevantly, what isn’t important. So that we can scale back all of this stuff that’s being asked for that quite frankly is probably confusing the hell out of the supply chain. Because they’re being asked to provide information and people will be discouraged. If you’re asked to produce some information and then nobody uses it, and nobody is checking it which is the point that Andrew was making earlier, then it’s even worse.

ANDREW HANDLEY I was just wondering with what you’ve just said whether there’s any value in going back to first core principles, that as construction professionals just as a very basic fore set you have 10 things around them that you have to try and stay abreast of. And it’s just everybody sharing, as you just said, the wide gamut of things that having to consider and take onboard and deal with, which all feed into this. I think that’s something that I often get into conversation when we’re working on projects with people saying this is just a very small part. There’s a big issue, a big recurring comment about BIM in general with facility managers is this is being used to meet a very wide range of requirements, not just to deliver the asset information. That say from the RIBA, that core list of 10 things is a really good example of a framework of here’s the breadth. I’m not saying it’s exhaustive and it’s perfect.

ANDREW SIMPSON I would just add to that as well, there’s a lot of confusion out there with the designers. Lewis probably knows about this as well, mixed messages and standardised formats of how data is presented etc. And again, it’s standardising this with the tiers on behalf of the DfE as well.

CHAT

Lewis Duell (External)… The benefit of the photogrammetry also drives the identification of the assets, models do not always have manufacturer specific objects, with generics used, making it difficult for FM teams to identify assets. Imagery drives for the easy identification of these items.

Sackey, Margaret (External)… Hi George and
Richard - Absolutely spot on👍 People in projects don't understand asset management and facilities managers don't know what to do with the information given at handover. How do we get this learning out to our professional institutions and associations? UCL Estates - Transforming UCL Safely https://www.ucl.ac.uk/transforming-ucl/

Has this group presented to CIC - Construction Industry Council, Construction Leadership Group ? Is there currently representation on this group?

Mo Shana'a (External)… Will have to jump off - I think there is definitely work to be done on figuring out how to feedback which requirements are being used or not & rethinking how information can be delivered as well. Look forward to the next session!
Andrew Simpson (Unverified)… One other challenge we have is the other software packages applied and not just Revit. Tekla, etc when trying to export models to ifc including all requirements to meet the DfEs EIR Excel document which includes all deliverables

Sackey, Margaret (External)… Please feel free to book unto The All London Universities & USHA - Hybrid Building Safety & Golden Thread Fire Safety Conference - 3rd Sept. 2025. This conference will highlight how much change is needed in our built environment industry. Please see registration details - The BSA & Golden Thread Fire Safety Conference - Date: Wednesday 3rd September 2025 - Registration: 08:30. Conference: 09:00-16:30. Email: Info info@goldenthreadfiredelay.com https://goldenthreadfiredelay.com/bsa-golden-thread-fire-safety-conference/

Pierre Venter (External)… 1-on-1 PFI Stoke on Thames example BBC. Fundamentals