The Group - BIM4Housing Advisory

Neil Yeomans – Orbit
Neil is the Head of Property Safety for Orbit. His team is multi-award winning and Neil was awarded the prestigious ‘influencer of the year’ award by RoSPA in 2020. The core of Orbit’s success is their ‘Continuous Improvement’ culture – one where they look beyond bare legal minimum standards and focus on safe systems of work. Ultimately, this has led Orbit to become the first national housing provider to achieve BS9997 accreditation, the International Safety Award for Customer Safety, as well as the RoSPA Gold for customer safety – this third-party recognition of Orbit’s work is critical to providing assurance to customers that Orbit prioritise their safety.

Debbie Carlton – Director, Dynamic Knowledge
Debbie Carlton is a specialist focused on working with organisations who want intelligent and sustainable solutions to solving capability, capacity and competence challenges arising from the changing world of work, and the twinned transition of net-zero and digitalisation. Debbie works across a number of sectors including the built environment. Debbie has recently introduced a successful organisational competency management platform provider in the Oil & Gas sector to the social housing sector including supporting the development of an associated UKAS TPS 69 Competency Management System Standard. Debbie is currently leading, in an Innovate UK project, how to intelligently profile competency demand arising from the impact of DfMA & MMC by connecting product data to tasks & procedures to competency knowledge and data.

Debbie is a recognised specialist in competency management, analytics and assurance with published research and experience of designing and delivering dynamic competency-based digital infrastructure and services in partnership with award winning AI technology partner. A recent research publication is - https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/transforming-the-productivity-of-people-in-the-built-environment/279420

Dave Peacock - Technical Director TÜV SÜD
Dave is a technical expert with 25 years’ experience in construction including 14 years’ experience in BIM & Digital roles.
As Technical Director of the BIM & Digital Services unit in UK, Dave is responsible for technical advisory and overall operations of the unit, assisting clients to define their information requirements and working with them to meet their goals.
Dave is a key member of the UK BIM Alliance, chairing the Midlands region and part of the UK BIM Framework - ISO 19650 Guidance Review Committee which helps shape the guidance to adopt BIM processes globally.
He has also been part of the Golden Thread Initiative (GTI) led by L&Q, which has helped to define the way forward for the management of assets in the housing sector in light of the Grenfell Tower disaster and the upcoming Building Safety Bill.

Lysa Nicely – Wandle Housing
Lysa has worked in the social hosing sector for over 20 years in large and medium sized organisations. Currently Lysa is working for a housing group around the south London area, delivering safety to over 7,500 homes. Her focus is to ensure her teams implement and deliver standards in line with the up-and-coming Building Safety Bill and the Fire Safety Act. As a Member of the Institute of Fire Safety Managers and an Associate member of the Institution of Fire Safety Engineers Lysa is also developing Building safety cases and is heading up the remediation programme for External Wall systems. Lysa has been involved in many round table discussions and working groups relating to driving improvements within the residential and commercial industry.

Paul White – Ventilation Fire Smoke
I am a Chartered Mechanical Engineer. I have had a long career in the design, development, testing and application of fire resisting and smoke control products. My main areas of expertise are ventilation, dampers, ducts and smoke control. Through interaction with many other groups and organisations I have an understanding of most passive fire protection issues too. I have published a well-received book about Smoke Control dampers that also gives an insight into smoke control systems. I am active in standards development bringing wide experience to both the BSI and CEN arenas as a committee chairman and member. I am now an independent consultant on the areas that I am experienced in and developing some training too.

Matthew Taylor – Taylor Design Consultancy
Matthew has 24 years’ experience in the construction industry, the majority being within the dry lining and internals sectors, and has previously held roles as head of a design department for a leading dry lining and internal fit-out specialist contractor, as well as technical management roles in the manufacturing sector, with two of the UK’s leading dry lining system manufacturers.
Matthew’s previous experience has included responsibility for building, assigning, and instructing project design teams, managing risk and strategic delivery, as well as identifying and reporting on construction defects and identifying potential remedial solutions.
In addition to this, Matthew has been involved in the FIS working groups and BSi panels, relating to the review and revision of relevant dry lining standards and industry related concerns. In 2019 Matthew was awarded an industry award by the FIS.

Paul Marsh - Head of Delivery Safer Buildings
As Head of Delivery for Safer Buildings, my major focus is to drive forward MTVH’s survey and remediation programme. With 15 years’ experience on Asset Management, Compliance and Building Safety I have worked on various investment, regeneration or remediation projects across London and the South East and possess a speciality in information and data management. I am interested in seeing how BIM can be used to improve delivery, reduce lifetime costs and increase resident safety and satisfaction.

Simon Bowker – One Manchester
I am Building Safety Manager my main role of is to manage the higher-risk buildings on a day-to-day basis and develop a golden thread of information for the buildings I manage thought out its lifecycle. I have a background in the electrical industry and fire safety. A key element of my role is overseeing the development and implementation of a building safety management strategy for the organization along with a resident engagement strategy so that we are fully ready for the implementing of the new building safety bill. As well as this i have implemented new fire safety policy and procedure at One Manchester.

Sharon McClure – Operations Director, Avesta Group
Since I started working within the Construction Industry, primarily in passive fire protection, I have become an ambassador for our industry.
Through my involvement within the Scottish Contractors Group / BuildUK / BuildScotland; Construction Scotland Procurement Working and currently serving as an Association for Specialist Fire Protection (ASFP) Council Member, I am also supporting the Academy for Construction People as part of their Executive Committee, with their Passive Fire Protection Apprenticeship Programme, providing a mixture of class and site training to increase the knowledge of the apprentices, and to ensure a more robust form of training for all UK based passive fire contractors.
As an active member of our industry, I hope to contribute to the improvements of not just our trade, but of the built environment as a whole.

Paula Chandler - Regional Design Director – Wates Construction London
With 25 years in the Construction and Engineering industry, Paula has contributed to numerous award winning, high profile and technically challenging projects across multiple sectors. Her focus is on collaborative working, driving design best practice and fostering innovation. She is an active promoter of digital twins, DfMA and off-site manufacture to enhance the design and build process. A motivational leader, team builder and communicator, she balances comprehensive knowledge of construction techniques with a desire to always find a better way.

Brett Hibbert – Fire Safety Manager
With over 25 years’ experience within the Fire Protection industry I now currently work for a social housing provider covering the South of England. I have extensive experience in various industries having started my career in the Royal Navy. My fire industry experience started as a fire extinguisher service engineer and with the introduction of the RRFSO in 2005 I decided to retrain so I could offer fire risk assessment services and advice. Having spent several years as a self-employed fire safety consultant I have an understanding of the different demands a fire risk assessor can experience depending on the situation, industry, and role they are undertaking.

Nicholas Nisbet
Nicholas Nisbet is an architect who has focussed on process improvement and information. His specialities include the implementation of BIM processes in architecture, engineering, construction and owner/occupation of buildings. He works as an independent consultant for governments, near-government bodies and companies worldwide looking at business and information improvement in the built environment. He is active within ISO, CEN, BSI, buildingSMART and several UK Government interoperability and safety initiatives.

Jarek Wityk – Design Manager Winters Electrical
I am a Senior Electrical Design Manager responsible for developing and implementing BIM, including information management, Revit, Dynamo & BIM360 deployments, automation, content audit and data collection. I also provide technical support to the team to successfully deliver Company and individual goals. I have been part of UK BIM Framework task group providing input on Guidance Part 3 - Operational Phase of the asset life cycle Edition-2. As well as being a contributor to Guidance Part 2 Edition 7. I provide design and technical support to the team, successfully delivering Company, team, and individual goals. I lead the Digital Engineering process and ensure collaboration with project peers to ensure design reviews and workshops are undertaken on all projects. Also, prioritise workload and decision making and work with the Operational Director, Contract Managers and Quantity Surveyors to provide a seamless engineering operation. Collaborate with the work winning team to create competitive advantage, creative innovations by considering future market trends to increase company profitability. I am a technical specialist with experience in the design, building physics engineering and #BIM fields. I have been responsible for implementing various technologies to assist in project delivery throughout my career. I have also held positions where I was responsible for ensuring that all work undertaken by outside consultants adhered to company guidelines and procedures.

Patrick Wilson – Patrick Wilson Architects
I am a Chartered Architect in private practice based in Wiltshire. I have used BIM Authoring tools since 2000 on a wide range of projects, both new build and alterations and refurbishment/restoration of listed buildings. I joined BIM4Housing at its inception by Andrew Carpenter and took over the chairman’s role in 2015. Through that position I became closely involved with the establishment of the UKBIMA as acting Operations Lead for the first year. I sit on the IET’s Built Environment Panel providing architectural input to and learning from the world of technology. I am contributing to the BIM4HAs project developing a collection of Case Studies for distribution amongst the HA sector.

Varun Soni – BIM Manager CalfordSeadon
Varun boasts 8 years’ experience in the industry and has been at calfordseaden since 2017. Throughout his academic and professional career, he has built a solid grounding in architecture, design, construction, and the implementation and use of BIM for design and construction projects. Varun is proactive in his approach to promoting BIM as an effective and efficient way of working in the industry from greater clarity and information management to a stronger understanding of the asset. Varun strongly advocates new digitalised methods of working to enable more digitalised areas in the industry, including an integration of AR and VR into BIM, more standardised delivery of information, and also an opportunity to bring greater value engineering and information management to construction and in particular to the housing sector.