The Golden Thread

The Golden Thread

George Stevenson – Activeplan

Chair of BIM-in-AM, Chair of BIM4Housing
Chair of Golden Thread Initiative Asset and Survey Information Group

The new Regs introduce a statutory requirement for Asset Owners & Managers to confirm that they have all of the information required to ensure buildings are safe – for all building types, not just Residential.

If they can’t demonstrate that, they are exposed to stop notices, prosecution - or worse.

However, the Regulators don’t define what information is required.  That is the responsibility of Asset Teams and their supply chains.

To answer this “Golden Thread” question, the Government asked a cross-disciplinary industry group called the Golden Thread Initiative to provide that expert view and I was asked to Chair the Asset & Survey Information Group.

It soon became apparent that we didn’t have all the required asset information expertise in the Working Group, so I was given permission to ask the experts who were already contributing to BIM4Housing.

Hundreds of subject matter experts devoted their time to share their experiences, learn from others and specify the detailed information they, as experts from different disciplines – development, design, construction, manufacturing, operations = consider important for building safety.

We distilled their recommendations into a series of publications which formed an expert industry=wide response to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUCH)


Golden Thread Initiative -  Asset & Survey Information Working Group

Working Group Scope: To create a standardised digital Golden Thread, we are suggesting information must be controlled at the component level, but with a link to its wider system(s) and spaces. To achieve this, we need to review what information is required, when the information should be supplied, who should supply it, where the information is located and why the information is needed.

Existing blocks already have a lot of asset information that is relevant to building safety; and existing blocks also have a need to manage the asset data requirements. This group will look at how we control asset data in relation to building safety and how this sits alongside the CDE. We are seeking to set out  suggested building safety information requirements for the Building Safety Case, for existing stock, that can be standardised and digitised.

This document has been compiled from several workshops of domain experts from the Golden Thread Initiative Working Group, Housing Association Data –Group and BIM4Housing.

The intention is to provide guidance in a form that a Landlord can use to understand their level of preparedness for the Golden Thread on their existing estate and how they can achieve the Golden Thread in manageable and affordable Steps. They may have good information about a block and the asset types (perhaps in document-based/pdf O&Ms), but find that they need to do additional work to identify where those individual assets are, of which systems they form part and which spaces they support.

  • Step 1 - is getting together all the base information - largely documents and data files, into “data containers” and identifying what is missing.
  • Step 2 - involves extracting the data from those documents into machine-readable data that can be managed, integrated and reported.
  • Step 3 - includes everything in the earlier steps but adds 3D, simulation and can enable the full Digital Twin.

Once Landlords have assembled the required information, Step 2 transforms the specific information that is key into digital/machine-readable data.

By following this process, they have started to implement the Golden Thread – and understand what to specify/procure on new projects or surveys.

As well as existing buildings, this set of requirements should inform new developments to ensure the required information is procured and delivered.

It has become clear that the asset data alone, or the tools and processes established to collect and validate it, do not satisfy the building safety case evidence, stored in the golden thread. The Regulator will need to understand the risks the Landlord has considered and see evidence that the measures required to mitigate those risks are in place.

The current focus is on asset types that relate to fire or structural risks, but other safety risks will emerge (perhaps infection control or climate change?) that will require different information on assets so, if a Landlord is embarking on a data capture process, it may be cost-effective to gather that information at the same time.

Benefits: although the current driver is the “Safety Case” requirements, operational processes such as maintenance and lifecycle replacement, will benefit from better asset information and the organisational benefits resulting from that better information could support the business case for investing in what is required for safety. The minimum level of information should be that described in Step 2, because the information is machine-readable and therefore easy to update and utilise in real-time. Step 3 should be the goal because it can enable the Digital Twin, but each Landlord will determine the relative value.

The teams identified the practical things that could break the Golden Thread and worked collaboratively to solve them