BIM4HOUSING CONSTRUCTION WORKING GROUP MEETING
GEORGE highlights the fact that there is cross disciplinary engagement in each of the working groups. Underneath the working groups are the work streams which tackle individual tasks. He then gives information about the activities of the various working groups.
RICHARD gives information about the BIM4Housing website. He shows the construction group subsite. After every meeting the leaders of the group will get the video/transcript/high points of the meeting which they can send out to attendees/non-attendees with any action points put on it. Engagement with the website is encouraged.
RICHARD shows the BIM4housing Black Box site which includes 6 sections. The ‘lessons learned’ section provides solutions to problems (photos included). The ‘publications’ section includes all the reports that have been produced, available for download and comments can be made.
GEORGE shows information about the potential implications on developers and constructors of the Defective Premises Act. He says the group needs to work on satisfying the needs of the new regulator, to develop and provide structured digital information. This information needs to be ‘intelligent’ and machine readable, as opposed to PDFs which have to be interpreted by people (with potential mistakes). Of particular importance is the moving away from specifications being performance specifications after work stage 4 to having to be prescriptive.
For the construction group, Gateway 2 is the critical gateway in the golden thread for the regulator requirements. A handover certificate will not be given unless it can be proved to the regulator that the building is going to be safe. At gateway 2/work stage 4 they will expect the design to be complete. The process taken (which has been published on the website) has been to look at things from a risk perspective.
Within BIM4housing there are the duty holders (working in housing associations and local authorities) who have the legal liability to make sure that buildings are safe. Also, the Tier 1 contractors who want to try and address ways they can help their supply chain supply them with better quality information.
Different people have got different ways of looking at information and what we are then doing is bringing that together into the BRE Templater. We are standardising the way product information is being created so that we can use it in all sorts of different ways.
‘On the 19th May we’ve been asked by BIM alliance to run five round tables to track a particular risk (spread of smoke through different asset types)’. GEORGE wants to prepare for this over the next few weeks.
MARC BRADFIELD talks from a Tier 1 contractor perspective about completing stage 4 design (the end of the process) ready to be submitted at gateway 2 is so far removed from what most people are used to doing: the majority of schemes have a heavy overlap between stages 4 and 5. He’s worried about the design program being squashed down at the front end.
GEORGE points out that the UK BIM alliance guidance is problematic (despite being good work) as it’s too high level and no one has the time to go through it and understand it.
ANDY MULLINS: ‘nowhere have I about any opportunity for us to have early engagement with the building control body that the building safety regulator may appoint (or as a body itself) prior to gateway 2. It’s a huge risk to have a fully completed design without any engagement prior to gateway 2. There’s going to have to be a softening of these government restrictions (because construction delays cost money).’ He says the staged approach the government hints at is useful.
GEORGE: ‘we’re becoming a regulated industry and the impact of that regulation is huge. The regulator will be reluctant to sign off (on a project) without good quality information. We’ve applied information management to a traditional process (this has to change).
PAUL McSOLEY: ‘we have to understand as a group all the questions we should ask ourselves before we give it to them. We tend to rely on someone else to give us advice (e.g., the manufacturer).’
PAUL CONNOLLY shows the Building Safety Landscape Group.
ANDY MULLINS, in response to Paul Connolly’s slide the Building Safety Landscape Group) makes a point about how things should not be overcomplicated. He compares the complexity with the mere 4 regulation changes that were instigated after the sinking of the Titanic.
PAUL McSOLEY says they’ll have to change how they procure because you can’t keep postponing it until it’s too late (and you’re at the fitting stage). (You have to apply) early engagement of products.’
GEORGE asks if there are any ‘data geeks’ who would like to get involved with the Templater tool and if so they can be included in the work being done on that in the design group. CHRISTINE volunteered.
ASIF will sit on one of the tables at the Digital Construction Week.
GEORGE: ‘we’re approaching things is a point of view of what’s the risk? What are the mitigations that might alleviate that risk? And also, looking at what is a system. A system might just be compartmentation, but a system could be the whole building. We want to get to a situation where the interrelationship between elements can be simulated so that we can ring the changes and use that to show the regulator that we’re delivering a safe building’.
RICHARD will send out an invitation for a couple of weeks' time on a Thursday morning. the work stream on change management needs a couple of representatives from each working group. Paul McSoley and Jan volunteer. Paul is taking over as co-leader of the construction group.
Actions:
PAUL McSOLEY is going to work on rearranging the purpose groups, follow them through the different tasks, so that there is a better flow.