BIM4HOUSING DEVELOPMENT WORKING GROUP MEETING 29-05-2025
DAVID POAT I’m the technical manager in the development team at Notting Hill Genesis. But for my sins, which are not worthy of mention, I’ve been asked for a while to chair this particular group. George and I have been talking about some of the topics that we would like to go through today. And one thing that continues to vex me in my role at Notting Hill Genesis is the quality of handover documentation, understanding of Regulation 38 documentation. We continue to have significant battles with our contracting colleagues about what is appropriate and what isn’t.
To be fair, that’s not being disrespectful to the contractors, because actually I think where we’re coming to is a place that as clients we maybe haven’t defined clearly enough exactly what it is that we need in order to operate and maintain our buildings. So, I can’t place the fault entirely at their door, but it’s a topic that continues to interest us and one that we’re planning on talking through today. We know that there’s also a very hot topic around the management of Gateway 2 processes particularly. And I know some of us gathered here have had some challenges around that.
We’re not planning on talking about that in any detail at all today, but as always in these groups if there are topics that you would like us to cover and like us to open up for discussion, then we’re very happy to do that. We always start these sessions with George talking to us about stuff, very well informed man that he is, so I know George has got some slides that he’d like to talk to us about to get the conversation going. I’ve got some current thinking hat I’d like to share with people and really just to get the party started.
GEORGE STEVENSON Obviously we’ve got a group of people here, some of whom have seen what we’re doing and they’ve been involved and actually have been big contributors to it. And we’ve got some new people as well, so I’ll skip through a little bit of the background so that you can see the context in which we’re working. (shares screen). One of the interesting things is that we’ve had some nice feedback from the government. This was last year. And then last week I had this from Tim Galloway, who is in quite a key role.
And they’re actively asking at the moment for industry feedback and industry responses. So I think that collectively we’re in a good position to provide that sort of feedback and perhaps simplify some of the issues. We’ve got this Miro board that a couple of the members set up last year. A Miro board is an online tool that allows you to make connections between different things, so you can create the relationships between things. And what the Miro board has been set up to do is everybody is interpreting the legislation in different ways, so we’ve created this.
And if you want a login to it put ‘Miro board’ into the chat and we’ll send it to you. We’ve also got a recording from a couple of months ago which Das from David Miller did which was a really good overview of how the thing works. But the purpose of it is a live document. So, as you come across things that are your interpretation of the way a certain maybe new bit of guidance comes out, it can go on there and then everybody else can see it as well. So, it’s a community effort.
Overall BIM4Housing, we’ve got the different groups and obviously this is the development group. But we’ve got an operations group, construction. A couple of the others we’ve not really driven forward because this has been going now for 4 years and a lot of the construction group are now meeting in the BIM In Asset Management group.
But we’ve created some really useful resources over the period that everybody has got access to. Including the things that the various different Golden Thread groups have pulled together as well. So, one of the things that we’re doing at the moment is we’ve set up a Golden Thread Taskforce where they’re going to be focusing on putting people together to create advice.
But the important thing about that is the outputs that we produce. So, we’ve got these on the website, you can download them and it shows the detail of what experts say is needed for, for example, smoke dampers or fire stopping. And the detail is quite significant. So, this is the sort of thing that the Regulator is going to want to see. What’s a fire door doing? Why is it there? What information do we need about it? We’ve come at it from the detailed end of things, but we’ve also got this sort of thing, this is a standardised way of doing fire door inspections.
And we’ve had over 80 people getting involved in this. These fire door inspections, you’ve got a Type 1 which is the inspection of a new fire door. A Type 2 which is a compliance statement of existing fire doors and Type 3 is the ongoing maintenance. And then we’ve now got one that we’re just publishing, for fire dampers, fire stopping, which you can get access to this.
PAUL WOMACK Is it worth differentiating between the inspections of communal fire doors and front entrance doors?
GEORGE STEVENSON I think it does that in the guidance. It’s an 80-page document. And the whole point of this is to reduce risks of delays. So, one of the challenges that we’ve come across, we’ve been doing audits on existing buildings just being handed over. This is one that we’ve been doing for another housing association. And you can see that although some of that key information has been delivered. This is not just Regulation 38, which is the fire safety stuff, this is auditing against what’s required for the Building Safety Act. And we’re using this sort of methodology to systematically go and do audits.
But that was the Regulation 38 information and you can see that there is quite a lot missing there. And that’s been very useful, and in fact the client was saying this to me after meeting this morning that this has been very useful because it’s meant that they can go back to, not just the main contractor, but go back to their subcontractors to get the information that’s needed. And it’s highlighting what’s missing. But I don’t think this is so uncommon. The other thing that we’re finding, this is another project where the handover documents, we’ve been asking for years for these to be in a machine-readable format.
The reason that’s important is that here, for example, we’ve got a document that’s in the handover information that’s a PDF. Which in itself is a bit problematic because it means that a human has got to read it and interpret it. But when we actually look at this, there for example it’s saying that that fire door there should be swapped out for a 60-minute fire door. Now, was it? This should be, as handover information, clear. And then also if you’ve got a reference down here, what we believe is needed is for that to be referenced electronically to where it is in the floor plan. Otherwise you’re relying on whether you’re read and interpreted that properly.
So, the reason I’m saying this is that the handover information itself, somebody might argue that they’re provided it, but you can’t consume it because it’s not in a form that is checkable. And this is another example where we’ve got a PDF, in this corner here you can see that there is an exit sign there, but you can only just make it out because there is a hatching pattern over it because it’s a reflective ceiling plan. I’m sure if we had the dwg file you’d be able to switch off the layer, and maybe a PDF, but this is what was handed over. So, these are the sorts of things that need auditing.
What we’re recommending is that we can have a very simple way of looking at this as a baseline to say these are the asset types that are mentioned in Regulation 38 and a very basic thing, we ought to have a common way of describing a fire door or a cavity barrier or an AOV. If some people call it a smoke vent and some people call it an AOV, and other people call it an Automatic Opening Vent, it’s extremely difficult to use any sort of technology to check things. Also, what we’re saying is we want some basic information. We want to know the individual asset ID because if they are smoke detectors you need to know that you’ve got 50 or 1,000 smoke detectors.
You need to know where it is, which circuit that it’s on, manufacturer’s product reference and data sheets. Who installed it, who commissioned it, who inspected it and who’s maintained it. So, what we’re trying to do within our little group is put together a standard set of information that is just a baseline that can be used to check. So that when David’s team are taking over a building, at least at this level it becomes a litmus test of whether the quality of information is there. And what we’re finding is this information just isn’t being handed over.
BRIAN McKENNA We should be using codes not just descriptions, so we agree a codification. So, people can use different descriptions, but once you’re into interoperability between systems, they share the code. And you can have different descriptions, but the code would be a big benefit.
GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely, but the point is that if you have an asset type name you can have a code behind it. The difficulty with codes, we use codes all of the time, we’ve got a master asset database that’s got 3,500 asset types in it and each one has got a standard taxonomy to work to.
But if you’re a normal person, you’re not knowledgeable about how taxonomy and codes work, you need to be able to find things easily. So therefore if you’re looking for a smoke detector, we think that it’s reasonable that you should be able to type in smoke detector and find something. But you’re absolutely right, the data key should be something that is properly machine-readable.
CHRIS MILLING As ever, I look at the spreadsheets and the information which is presented. And although we talk a lot about how you can get the errors flagged, at some point the information will be handed over. And can that information or that data in detail be accepted by the client’s systems?
Because a lot of it is doing check upfront, but then knowing what gets filtered through to actual operational systems, so that they can actually use it at the point that they’re starting to use a building would also be helpful. But it’s almost a lot of talking about the data, but not how, it will get consumed and if you know how it will get consumed that will probably drive things to become more machine-readable. Because then it’s like oh, we’ve got it, we can use it.
BRIAN McKENNA That’s a very good point, Chris. We need more automation in the process and this is what George is alluding to. If we can get machine-readable data, not just static PDFs, then we can look at solutions where we can consume that data into operational systems, like asset management systems. That’s certainly what we’re looking at.
CHRIS MILLING The thing was that would be the chicken and egg, so it’s from that comment. It would just be oh, if it is machine-readable then we’ll look at solutions how to feed it in. You could base your information requirements around saying we have got these information requirements and it will go into this system. In which case you’re almost pushing it back to the contractor to provide it in that format.
CONNOR STEVENSON Well, that’s the ISOs, that’s what you’re supposed to do. Start with the end in mind.
GEORGE STEVENSON Certainly. If I just show one other thing, it reinforces what Chris has just said. We’ve got in our community lots of standards that we’re working with and they’re all extremely helpful. But the challenge is, is anybody checking them? So, this is an old slide, but I think it’s still very relevant. This is the old BIM Taskforce process. The important thing here is that you’ve got what are called exchange points, or COBie drops is another term for them, at different stages through the process.
And what you’re then doing is identifying what’s needed at each stage. And it’s being checked and validated at each stage. And if the information that was required hasn’t been provided, it should get sent back. So, that feeds into what Chris and Brian have just been saying, that it needs to be machine-readable. What we’re currently doing is people are trying to do it all manually. And if it’s document based and people are doing it manually there’s going to be mistakes and we just can’t afford that.
So, if we look at the Golden Thread, what we’re supposed to be doing is having it so that the building is considered to be a whole system and therefore everything is working together. And we therefore need to be able to have a situation where a particular risk, let’s say that a fire breaks out in a kitchen, we’ve got smoke getting in to that stairwell there. How can we prevent that from happening? And we need information, we need to make sure that all of the assets that go to make up that compartment wall are fit for purpose.
So just having, for example, a really good fire door inspection, and we’ve got great fie doors would be useless if the penetration seals don’t work. And you’ve then got other systems that kick in if the compartmentation fails. So, what we need to do is make sure that we’ve got interoperable information, which is I think what Brian was saying earlier. Here, for example, we’ve got a door. That door can be referenced properly if we’ve used the right taxonomy and classification, so that in the BIM model you can pick up the detailed information about what’s missing from that particular door.
So, if David sets up to say that he wants to know the declaration of performance of that door, it will automatically alert you when that declaration of performance isn’t attached. And the declaration of performance is probably coming through from a product library. So, the manufacturer’s product data can then be kept up-to-date once and then accessed. But from a building safety point of view, you probably want to make sure that you know what spaces are being protected by that door. So therefore we’ve got that relationship between the asset, the system that it’s part of (let’s say compartmentation) and what spaces it’s protecting.
And then finally you’ve then got a range of different software applications that are probably going to be used to do inspections, commissioning and things like that. And they all need to be referenced back to that same door. And coming back to Regulation 38, this is legally what everybody should be being provided. So if, for example, you’re struggling with contractors that aren’t providing you with the right Regulation 38 information, this is the legal requirement And you as the developer need to be confident that you’ve got the right information, because you’ve got to sign this declaration to say that you’ve got it all.
I personally don’t think anybody can sign that at the moment, with the quality of information that we’re getting. And the contractor is equally liable because they’ve got to sign a declaration to that effect as well. And my understanding is you don’t get a certificate of completion unless this has been signed. Now, I know there’s pushback on that, but that is the law. And the reason that we need to know, for example, where some of these assets are, like fire dampers. We need to know where they are so that when they’re inspected we can make sure that they’ve got, for example, a breakaway joint. So that if a fire takes place and it collapses that ductwork, it doesn’t get pulled out of the wall.
Now, in many cases contractors don’t know where fire dampers are. So, this is an example. There’s a number of different software packages being used in this, but this is an example of the interoperability that Chris was just talking about earlier. And that is we’ve got 5 different software applications. In this particular case they’ve used Revit. They’ve modelled in some detail the building services, they’ve put in where the fife dampers are, they’ve modelled them. We’ve then been able to use COBie to pick up where they are. So, we’ve got a list of all of the assets.
It’s connected into the product library so you can see which fire damper was used. And also, you can get a very simple plan of where that item is in the building. So you can see that particular fire damper, which wall that it’s in, and also we can then connect through to the 360 photo that’s been done through a schedule. So, you can pick a particular item and it remembers, it takes you to a 360 photo of where that is. This is really, really useful BIM stuff because you’re not requiring people to finish the BIM models. And then we’ve got here a connection back to the documents.
So, those documents are tied back to the object. So, it means that we don’t have the disconnect between the O&M, the model, the schedules and the inspections. And I think that’s the sort of thing that we need to be moving towards, that also records which other projects that particular fire damper was used in.
BRIAN McKENNA What you’ve just shown us, was that constructed using just COBie data?
GEORGE STEVENSON Yes.
BRIAN McKENNA So, you’ve taken in a well-populated COBie file, and obviously you can attach things like 3D images, you can retrospectively go out with your cameras and attach that and stuff.
GEORGE STEVENSON Well, the answer to that is yes. Basically, COBie is the data schema, it’s been populated with data that has been properly classified and categorised. Active Plan has got an application that complies with the COBie data schema, but other people do that as well, that’s the whole point of it. And therefore, we can interoperate with the different applications using that data schema. So our integration with Revit, for example, is using that data set.
BRIAN McKENNA And then what about Uniclass taxonomy? You’ve used that in there as well to get a uniform description of the assets.
GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely, not just that, Brian. What we’re now doing is we’re using Uniclass to identify what the content is of a document. One of the frustrations that people have is that they’ll open a document, because all that they’ve got is a file name they’ve no idea what it is.
So what you’re able to do is to have the document classified using the PM table in Uniclass, so that if it’s what type of certificate it is, rather than having a term ‘certificate’ that you’ve then got to open up and find out. Because you can have thousands of certificates on a project. You can say what certificate is that. So, you can have those pre-classified as well. We’re huge believers in classification.
BRIAN McKENNA Yeah, that gives you standardised metadata to search, find and understand that document, to a certain extent even before you open it.
CONNOR STEVENSON I work for Wheatley Housing in Scotland, so I think some of the sections and legislation are at bit different. We’re talking about everything having its own classification and having the BIM objects from a library. How long did it take for those teams to build those objects? Because a lot of this stuff, particularly with existing buildings, those objects don’t actually exist and they need to be modelled with all of the information then filled in on the Revit family, or the Archicad family or whatever. So, is that something that you’ve had to do?
GEORGE STEVENSON No, we don’t do that, nobody does that. You don’t have to do it. So, what you’ve just talked about there, it’s the principle of actually creating 3D models in Revit or Archicad of manufacturer’s products. And I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and nobody in asset management uses the manufacturer’s models. There’s no need to do that. What we are doing is the product library that we’ve got is constantly being updated by projects.
We’ve made it free and the industry is populating it as they do projects. We tend to pick it up at the point of technical submittal. So, when a product is selected the first thing that has to happen, you need to have a record of what you’re installing anyway, don’t you? So, at that point, whoever it is that’s proposing that particular product puts it into the product library and it’s then available for everybody to use.
CONNOR STEVENSON So, you’re model could just be a simple block extrusion that’s linked to the product information.
GEORGE STEVENSON That’s right, the connection is done in the database and the connection to the model is via an API connection from the model.
DAVID POAT Thank you, George, and thanks to everyone that’s contributed to that conversation. I always feel very conflicted when I listen to George talk because he paints a picture of the future that is very compelling. And Connor or Chris we’re talking about starting with the end n mind. And I think what George has painted there is a picture of probably where we’re all aiming. But the reason why I’m conflicted is, and everyone is going to be in a different place on that journey, but speaking personally it feels like we are a very long way away from creating a world that George has painted for us there.
And the context of that for me, and I said it at the beginning, we’re still battling with contractors to provide us with the most basic levels of information. And as George said, it’s incumbent upon us as clients to be singing off on the information that we’re being given and saying yes, this is adequate for us to be able to manage a building. And frankly we’re not doing that, as a client we’re not making those sort of declarations because we can’t. Because we don’t know that we’ve got all of the information that we need in order to manage buildings properly.
And we’d love to be in that place, but I don’t think we are. And even if we have the information, we’ve got armies of people that are kind of trawling through those documents, consultants normally at huge cost to us trying to check it out. And it’s just not giving us the assurances that we need. Now, I’m talking very personally and I’m bearing my chest there to the world a little bit, and I suspect all of us are in different places on that journey. So, what I was going to lead into, and it’s going to be very un-tech, so for the tech minded amongst you, brace yourselves to be dragged back into the dark ages of spreadsheets.
But I’ve done a piece of work in response to the need for us to be signing off on the information that we are receiving, And the fact that I don’t think as clients we have defined well enough exactly what it is that we’re expecting from contractors. And without being disrespectful of contractors generally speaking, they will find the path of least resistance and they’ll give you as little information as they think is absolutely necessary. And we’re having very long debates about what constitutes Regulation 38 and what doesn’t.
So, I just wanted to share with you some of my thoughts on what I think constitutes Regulation 38 stuff and really open it up for people to contribute to. What I would caveat that with is this is very much a work in progress. I’ve shared it with nobody, you are the first recipients of this wonderful information. (shares screen). But what I’ve tried to do is to link together, at a fairly high level, the sort of information that we’re expected to produce for the Gateways. One of those pieces of information is something called a fire & emergency file, that there is some guidance around, but I’ve tried to add a little bit to that.
And then I’ve tried to link that to the Regulation 38 documentation as well. I suspect that all of you will be familiar with the stuff that’s on this first page because it’s stuff that’s required of us for the Building Control submissions at Gateway 2, so I won’t dwell on that. But then when it comes to the fire & emergency file, yes there is some guidance and the guidance talks about fife strategy documents. And I’ve tried to add bit of flesh on well, OK, what does that mean, what are the strategic documents that get produced? And again most of that stuff will be fairly familiar to you.
Just one particular one for us, the introduction of electric vehicles into our car parks under our buildings poses a very particular risk. And so we are placing the onus on our design and build contractors to carry out specific risk assessments around that particular edition. And that generates a strategic document that to my mind needs to be included as a fire strategy document. The guidance talks about active and passive installed systems, but doesn’t give us any detail as to exactly what it is we should be putting in our files, so I’ve tried to elaborate on that.
It asks for external wall information. Again, lots of documents get generated around external walls, and again I’ve tried to list them out there. Individual product fire rating details. Yeah, OK, so we need, and George alluded to this in terms of the library that Active Plan have developed. But I’ve tried to start to define here well OK, which are the specific products that we need test data and fire rating data around? And I’ve tried to list those out. We’ve had conversations with contractors about the relevance of BBA certification and where it’s relevant and where it isn’t. And again, we’re trying to provide a bit more definition around that.
Statutory certificates, building regs sign off, yeah, that’s in the file. As-built drawings, yes, that’s in the file. We never get as-built drawings, I don’t know what your experience of dealing with contractors is. But you ask them for an as-built drawing and it’s like you’re asking them for the world, they’re simply not prepared to produce a document that describes itself as as-built. For me, obviously under the fire regs we’ve got to populate PIB boxes with information, as far as I’m concerned that’s fire & emergency file stuff. We produce pre-handover FRAs, we produce fire safety management plans.
And we produce an awful lot of quality assurance records around fire and structural safety now. All of which needs to find itself into the fire & emergency file that we then submit to the Regulator at Gateway 3. So when it comes to the as-built drawings and these active and passive systems, that’s when for me you start to get into the realms of the Regulation 38 requirement. And what I’ve produced here, and it’s very much akin to what George has already shown you, is Ive tried to list here what are all of the permanent building elements, what are all of the permanent M&E systems relating to fire and structure. And what exactly is the information that we need from our contractors?
So, to start with for each of those systems we need the technical submittals. When it comes to the installation details we need to know what the contact details are for who’s installed it, what the competency of those installers were and what certification they hold. What conformity certificates there are in relation to the installation itself. Commissioning and test certification. Any insurance details relating to that system and any third-party acceptance accreditation associated with that. So, this is very much document led, this isn’t anywhere near what George has been talking about in terms of digital records and how that digital information connects.
For me this is about before we get into that digital world we’ve got to get the basics right, and we’re just not yet getting the basics right, so this is about trying to set that out. When it comes to handover, this is high level summary, but we need the O&M information, we need operation manuals. We need manufacturer’s literature, we need the warranty information, we need the as-built schematics and schedules. Now, we all know this, this is pretty standard stuff. But frankly we just don’t get it, and what we as the client is not yet smart enough doing is defining this in our contracts, this is what we get from our contractors.
Just to delve into a little bit more detail. This is a piece of work that myself and one of my colleagues have done.This isn’t just our work, we took some work that others had done. We worked with a company called Zutec that I’m sure many of you will be familiar with. And they’ve put together schedules of documentation and folder structures that we’ve tried to take and we’ve tried to expand upon. As you’ll see, each folder, each document type has its own singular reference number. So when it comes to certificates, in a smoke ventilation system there are three folders for certificates: testing and commissioning, design and acceptance certificates and product declaration certificates.
But each of those will have its own unique reference number. There is another level of detail that sits below this. So when we talk about testing and commissioning certificates, what are the specifics for smoke ventilation systems? What exactly is it that we need to see? So, the reason for sharing this is that this is our first attempt to try and add a significant amount of flesh on the bones. Because when you read the Regulation 38 document itself it creates really good breadth in terms of what its intent is and what the breadth of expectation is. But it offers no depth whatsoever into the kind of data and the information that’s expected when these systems are handed over.
So, this is me bearing my chest here a little bit and saying look, this is where we’re at, we’re just trying to get the basics right. And once we’ve got this right then we can start to look at some of the digital solutions that George has shared with us. So, that’s all I wanted to share. It’s a work in progress, it’s going to go through many iterations I’m sure before we get it absolutely right. But the message is, unless we ask our contractors specifically what it is that we need we’re not going to get it. And that’s kind of where our thinking is. So, I don’t know if anyone has got any thoughts or comments.
Just to start that off, maybe if people are prepared to share, where are you at with this journey? Are many of you close to where George is? Or are most of us still nearer to where I am and just trying to get the basics right?
EDWARD COSTER To give you comfort, David, I think that people are closer in our world to where you are. I agree, it’s good to have an ultimate objective somewhere in the region of where George is, often on Mars or somewhere. But we need to deal with the here and now and to be quite frank we are struggling to get out of our contractors the basics. I’ve had lots of conversations and I know that colleagues on the call will back me up, where we ask for documents. We really do want the structural information, it’s not just Regulation 38. At least there we had a framework for the information that we need.
We’re starting from scratch really with structurals, it’s not something that we’re ever focused on before, so that’s another tricky area. So when we say we really want all of the structural information, yes we do include things like concrete crush tests results. Yes, we want to know about the structural aspects of the padding system, because that often gets forgotten. You focus on the fire safety aspect of planning, but not the structural and my word, when we’ve got an HRB with whatever cladding system on 50 metres tall, we ought to know about that structure.
DAVID POAT We’ve employed probably for a couple of years now what we call structural guardians. So, we have structural guardians, we have fire guardians, we have clerk of works. We have M&E guardians, we have heat network guardians. So, we’ve got an army of consultants that we employ at significant cost just to do the kind of quality assurance on our projects. And we get them to review the design, we get them to do site inspection. But actually at the end we also get them to review the documentation that we receive. And where there isn’t any specific kind of guidance, the question that we ask them is this enough?
Is this information of good enough quality that in your opinion it would allow us to manage the building going forwards? And we find that’s hugely beneficial, but it comes at a cost, we have to employ consultants to do this stuff. But we do it simply because we’re trying to drive a much better quality agenda, but it seems to work for us.
PENCHO STUDENKOV I think we find it very useful and beneficial to cooperate with other teams in this process, specifically the building safety team and the operational team. So what we end up doing is we have our own internal process and you said, we have involved external consultants to peer review fire strategy, for example. Pre-contracts, for example, ERs. We have full control for our ? case 47mins 28secs, not for 106 case. But what we found with the HSE is if we had that feedback from different teams where we can improve areas that need improvement, we can actually set this in the ERs, in the contracts in the beginning and then just policing that.
So, in regards to the Regulation 38, I think the spreadsheet format might be actually a better way of putting the information, but at the moment we do it in a Word document. What we have done is we’ve gathered information at a certain stage, so we start really early on from a design point of view. When we do site inspections as well, so we were basically policing the contractors, what they have installed, what they should have installed.
GEORGE STEVENSON I just want to flag up that what I was doing in terms of showing what I did, that isn’t a demonstration, those were live jobs. So, it was the reality. But I was really doing it to respond to what Chris and Brian were saying earlier because most of our projects, we’re down at your level, David, in terms of managing documents. Because that’s the quality of information that’s being handed over. We’re doing Tower Hamlets at the moment, we’ve been working on that for 2 years, and they’ve got 78 HRBs. So, we’re working with Ridge the surveying firm and we’re creating spatial models for all 78 blocks.
All of the floors, all of the spaces in every floor and also all of the fire critical assets.
The reason that I’m saying that is we’re doing that in a very simple way. It’s all being done in a proper database, but it’s being done in a progressive way so you can start with simply identifying where all of the smoke vents are. And then saying OK, if we’ve got a smoke vent, do we need to record what the actuator is? Probably yes. And therefore do we then need to look at what software is being used to do inspections or whatever. What I’m saying is that we can start very low and then work up. What’s really important, as Brian was saying earlier, is you get the coding and the taxonomy and the classification right.
Because what you really want is all new information that’s being collected, even on existing buildings, you want it being collected in a standardised way so that you can make it machine-readable.
DAVID POAT In all of the years that you and me have been talking, you’ve never suggested you’re down at my level. So, I thank you for that.
PAUL WOMACK Yes, it’s in my ideal world, so I may be wrong. I think for buildings, especially for the ones that we’ve already got as built, is the priority is to have your fire strategy showing where everything is on the plans. And then using the BIM system, George’s system, for identifying everything, all of the assets within that fire strategy.
Rather than sort of maybe go what we’ve been using, we could have the advantage of going straight into the modern system using all of the correct data etc. And I think there is an ideal world to have both systems running in conjunction with each other. And then when it’s ready go into the digital side of things. But I think personally and I’ve been looking at this for some time, the sooner we can get that information, and get it digitally, the better.
PENCHO STUDENKOV (shares screen). Like I said, cooperating with the building safety team, for example, gives us an opportunity to request and ask for certain information. For example, this is high-rise buildings in scope and this is the sort of information that we are requesting, let’s say 10 weeks prior to completion. But there are all sorts of information. The only thing I just want to mention is we use Word instead of Excel because we need to explain to contractors what is what. So basically what is Regulation 38, we also put abbreviations and some sorts of definitions of what is a fire door set. Because sometimes we get into discussions about what is what.
But when you put that and use it in ERs as annex, I think it’s quite clear that this is our expectations. And this is what we should receive in terms of information. You’re right, as-built drawings and all of the versions of fire strategy documents, including the as-built fire strategy, should be provided. But in terms of the competency as well, it’s CDM, Building Safety Act, we need to know about the competency and at the moment the contractors are pushing back on providing any sort of competency, except for fire doors and fire stopping.
DAVID POAT Yeah, there’s quite a lot of accreditation in place around fire doors, fire stopping, BM Trada, FIRAS, those sorts of organisations. There’s quite a lot of third-party accreditation stuff, so you would imagine that stuff is fairly readily available. For other systems, maybe not so much.
PENCHO STUDENKOV Not just accreditation, it’s also training and pretty much what is the competence criteria that the main contractor have taken when they consider the specific subcontractor, appointing them for their specific role.
PAUL WOMACK In regard to document naming, should we be dictating to the contractor how we want those information recorded? So, we want this listed as this document with these codes. Rather than here’s your PDF for X92.
GEORGE STEVENSON You definitely should be doing that. What I was going to say Pencho, that document that you’ve shown me8 is one that John Morrow shared with me, a much earlier version a few years ago. And it was one of the best that I came across, actually, I’m sure that it’s even better now. But what I would say is the problem is that you provide those documents, and David will provide documents and Camden will provide documents. And the difficulty is that the contractors, and it’s not just the contractors but it’s their supply chain, they probably won’t read them.
And if they read them, they won’t have the bandwidth to interpret them. So, there’s two things that I’m suggesting. One is that rather than Origin, Notting Hill and Camden all having different sets of requirements of their supply chain, why don’t we come up with something that’s standardised in terms of requirements? Because that would make it a lot easier for the main contractors, and the main contractors can then make sure that their subcontractors are all providing the information. And we’ve got an opportunity to make it properly machine-readable. If we’ve got it properly machine-readable, we don’t need ot be manually checking things.
So, that’s what I think we’ve got an opportunity, and I know that I’m jumping across to the Golden Thread Task Group now, but I think that’s something that the Golden Thread Task Group could help landlords and main contractors actually put together.
PENCHO STUDENKOV Can i just add on this, it’s not just giving the right tools, it’s also giving in to the right people. So for example, machine-readable format, is the person who actually submits all of the documents, they also need to be educated and also need to be trained.
GEORGE STEVENSON I’ve got an answer to that, actually. We’ve been working for years with the Supply Chain Sustainability School. They’ve been interested in what we’re doing in BIM4Housing for several years now. It’s an organisation that I came across about 3 or 4 years ago, and they’re funded by the CITB. And they are controlled by all of the big contractors, and clients as well. And they key thing is that they provide free training to SMEs. Now, given that the majority of the people that are actually producing this information seem to be SMEs, below 250 employees, I think that’s a really interesting point.
So, I’ve been talking with the Supply Chain Sustainability School about them putting together some training courses that can support exactly what we need. I did a pitch to them last week to get them to do it, because obviously we’ve got no money, in BIM4Housing we’re all volunteers, but if we become an audience for it and can suggest this to contractors as well. Because contractors are keen, because everybody at the moment is exposed, because everybody is having to do things uniquely.
PENCHO STUDENKOV Making it contractual actually, not suggesting, but putting that in a specification in our ERs, that specific training. If there is a specific training for that, that would be ideal.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, that’s an interesting one because the point that someone was making earlier about competency, that’s a really good way of doing it.
PENCHO STUDENKOV Yeah, we already do it for fire doors, for example, or fire stopping, we have specific requirements and third-party schemes that we wish contractors to be using. Why don’t we actually put that as an additional training or competency where we will be dealing with data.
EDWARD COSTER For all of this, we’re quite good at coming up with lists of what we want. And I think we’ve got a pretty good list of what we want that we use at Origin, it’s very detailed. But we still struggle at times to get the things on that list. And there’s the other side of this which is the policy and procedure that goes along with it. And we need to get better at detailing the regulatory drivers for this, the reasons why we need it. Who is going to be responsible at different stages?
The tome scales, a lot of our contractors at the moment are saying this information has got to be provided 10 weeks out, 6 weeks out from completion. From a point of view of creating a safety case report, we’d probably want that information the same time that the Building Safety Regulator is getting it at Gateway 2. Because if things aren’t going to change significantly, we could start building our safety case based on that information from that point. And then of course we’re made aware of any changes, we can make the alterations.
That would take a lot of stress out of the project because we could deal with issues that come up, rather than discovering the problems a few weeks out from handover and going that’s going to be an operational nightmare, what can we do about it? We can just design things out before they become a problem. So, i think that whatever we do on this we need to look at that policy and procedure because I think actually we’re getting very close to having that definitive list of what we want as information. It’s just how we receive that information and who is responsible for it.
GEORGE STEVENSON And how do you check it. Because if people know that you’re checking, then they’re more likely to respond properly. If they don’t think that you’re checking, then people will naturally not bother.
EDWARD COSTER Yeah, and that’s perhaps where the machine-readable documents are useful. We for argument’s sake, we might have received certification documents for an electrical system. Interestingly when you look at it you realise, just for argument’s sake, the design document has a date that is after the install date. And that does make you wonder what’s been going on there.
GEORGE STEVENSON We’ve come across stuff recently on a project and the status was status C. And I looked that up and it says that it’s rejected.
DAVID POAT And nobody has done anything about it.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah.
BRIAN McKENNA This is a great discussion and in terms of actually handover, I think in Camden part of the problem is we’ve got nobody on the client side who is what we call the information asset owner. So, who owns, who is responsible for this data when you get it back from your main contractor?
And if you’ve got someone responsible, that will put greater onus on that information asset owner to ensure that they’re getting the right data, the right quantity, the right format, so we have got sufficient data coming through from the main contractor. If nobody is responsible on the client side, if nobody is responsible for that ownership, then obviously there’s less imperative to actually ensure that it’s done properly. And that’s the whole idea of information assets owner, ultimately they are responsible for that data.
DAVID POAT Yeah, that’s interesting, Brian. Our asset management organisation has changed beyond recognition over the last couple of years. For a whole bunch of reasons, but building safety being just one of them. And we have an asset data team, but they’re probably not as well connected to the kind of development process as they should be. So, kind of playing to what was said before in terms of starting with the end in mind, we really need the end users of this information to be at the table defining, or helping us to define, exactly what is needed.
BRIAN McKENNA Absolutely, David.
GEORGE STEVENSON I think the other challenge, David, is that you just used the term asset management.
DAVID POAT I did, was that wrong?
GEORGE STEVENSON No, not at all. But when first got involved in residential, probably 7 or 8 years ago, I’ve come from a world of asset management, and what you call asset management isn’t what the rest of the world calls asset management. In most cases, asset management in housing associations and councils is lifecycle replacement.
DAVID POAT Well, plus compliance, there’s a lot of compliance management goes on in asset management now.
GEORGE STEVENSON But not planned maintenance.
DAVID POAT That’s a good question. I mean definitely not day to day repairs, that’s separate. Planned replacement strategy, definitely. Planned maintenance, good question. I think that planned maintenance is actually part of our asset management function now. And that’s where our asset management function has changed.
GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, it should be part of it.
DAVID POAT OK, as always we have really interesting conversations at these sessions with lots of good input. It feels like we’ve got a proposal on the table which is if we’re going to move this forward there is value in us moving it forward collectively. There is no point of us all disappearing into our own corners and reinventing the wheel every time. It seems, George, there is a suggestion that this is very aligned with what the Golden Thread team is doing. So, there seems to be some value in aligning ourselves with that particular workstream. On a practical level, how best to move that forward? How can we do that?
GEORGE STEVENSON Well, there’s a number of people in this meeting who are also part of the Golden Thread Taskforce, so I think that’s a bridge to achieve that. What we’re trying to do at the moment is to do two things. What I think will be useful, we’ll try and determine within the Taskforce to come up with a set of base level requirements. Because I’ve also been talking with the Fire Industry Association and all of the federations and the NFCC. Because what I thought would be important is to get everybody’s buy in to the basic level.
Every time that anybody looks at what I’ve suggested, they say yeah, but what about this and what about that, like Brian did earlier, Absolutely right but what we want to do is to try and make it as simple as possible so that it becomes a no brainer. If you’re installing something, we want to know where you’ve installed it, we want to know the manufacturer’s model number. We want a record of who did the commissioning, if it needs commissioning. So, I think if we can do that and then run it past the group here.
And if you’re interested in doing what David is saying there, you feel that your organisation would be willing to join a more collective…we’re not asking for any money. But if you think they’d be interested, drop that in the chat a standard set of requirements.
DAVID POAT Just put that in the chat and that’s you putting your hand up saying this is something that I’d like to be involved in.
RICHARD FREER Just put in the chat ‘standard’ and we’ll pick it up.
GEORGE STEVENSON The other thing I would say, David, we did a survey a couple of weeks ago in the BIM In Asset Management meeting and it came up with some quite interesting and surprising results. Not hugely surprising to me to be honest, but I think a lot of people were surprised, I’m very happy to share with you the results of that, but it basically talked about whether people’s expectations. For example, in terms of Regulation 38, the way I’m looking at it is it’s like a canary in the mine. Because after all of the bashing that the industry has had, if they still can’t get the Regulation 38 stuff right, the structural stuff doesn’t stand a chance. So, if you’re interested just put ‘survey’ in the chat and we’ll send it to you.
DAVID POAT So ‘standard’ if you want to get involved in the Golden Thread stuff and ‘survey’.
CHRIS MILLING I’m going back to a point on data collection. So again, with all of the spreadsheets you’ve seen, it’s everything all together, all at once. Whereas perhaps some thought needs to be given around your main contractors to say that you have got to have some software which, potentially hand scanners or something, so that when they employ their subcontractors they can actually get a hand scanner to say oh, I’ve logged into this scanner, it’s in, I’ve got to scan its product number. Because Im scanning it I’m saying that I’ve installed it.
But again, it’s going back, if you can collect your data at the point of entry, then your data quality is going to be far better. So, would it perhaps not be better to sort of thin in future the best way to coordinate is when you have your main contractors the stipulation is they need to collect that data at the point of contact. If they need to get hand scanners which they lend to subcontractors then fine, but you as a client have got it and potentially you as a client can see this system.
Potentially you could flag up that somebody has installed the wrong door or something. I know you don’t want to scan absolutely everything, so obviously they’ve got assemblies which will represent a fire door and everything around it. And that’s certified so that should potentially do it. But it opens ip the opportunity that you’ll start seeing when what products in there, and then they’ve got it.
The other point on that, because I’ve been looking at a book on data warehouse, and once I saw a Snowflake demo where they almost had dataverses. So, where you were talking about different requirements from different people so that your product requirements, Camden’s requirements, N Genesis, whatever. But potentially your main contractor could maintain that. So, they would put the requirements up, but then almost you’ve got a data warehouse where they’ll transform to say this is actually supposed to match the requirements from Camden, this is actually supposed to match.
So, essentially they’ve almost got a system which is holding it centrally, but it enriches the data when they get the different thing from either the subcontractors or from requirements from the client. It’s only because I was seeing these three different things hat i put together, but the first thing I’d say is get your data collected when it’s installed because you can potentially get so much in there just having a part number, where the location is. So you could specify once it’s installed, you scan the product, you scan the space. And then afterwards you can do whatever you like with it. You can link the product, you can get your zones together and say I want to know what this zone is.
So, talking about your fire zones you could say I wanted to find fire zone A which is space ABCD. But if you’d collected everything upfront which says this object is installed here, then you’ve immediately got that relationship built up with the space and all of the products around it. Then you can create your systems and you can create your zones and do your manipulation after. But yeah, looking at the spreadsheet once everything’s been installed and then somebody has had to type it in. So, collect it off point and get them to say this is what people have got to collect and then you don’t have to fill in a spreadsheet too much.
GEORGE STEVENSON Chris, I’ve done a lot of work in this area and one of the challenges is making sure that we don’t end up with dozens of different feeds of information from mobile apps. Each of which has been done for a particular purpose. So, I agree with you completely, but the process needs to start before they go to site so that the information is collected against a known space and also, ideally, a known asset. So when people are doing the inspections, then over a period of time they’ll be using different software applications to do the inspection.
It’s critical that it’s referenced back to that unique asset because otherwise it’s a nightmare to try and pull together. We’re trying to do it at the moment with fire stopping. They’ve used a mobile app to do that to inspect the fire stopping, and it’s really detailed. The problem is that it creates a unique floor plan for every single fire stopping asset. So, in this particular project, which isn’t a big project, it’s got 1,300 fire stopping records that have been captured on a mobile tool and every single one has got its own floor plan.
CHRIS MILLING I understand that’s a challenge, but if you had almost your central record of your assets. And again, if you potentially feed out to your subcontractors what it is, they might be able to create a completely different ID as long as when they return it to you they marry it back to the asset you were talking about. So again, it’s saying this links with this asset and then you’ve got that chain back. I’ll try and look, it was an excellent seminar on Snowflake to do with retail. They had a dataverse where it was, you could do your interrogation of data that everyone who put data in that area had a specific remit to do, but after that you could do it.
It was a couple of years ago, but I was thinking now I understand what the dataverse is. But each of these separate parties would almost, I don’t know if it’s a Snowflake thing, but it was, they had the data available then they could actually manipulate it and pull it together. When you wanted to get your stats, you would go to whichever sources and it would actually, it was somehow magically linked.
DAVID POAT That sounds like a really good idea because I think what you’re basically saying is you kind of push the digital solution further back into the supply chain. So, if you collect the information digitally in the first place, one it generates the data much quicker and you’ve got much more opportunity to do something with it downstream. In essence, that seems to be what’s being said.
So, we’ve got a bit of a plan. We connect with the Golden Thread people, and those that have said ‘standard’ can get involved in that. I think this has been a really good conversation. I think it’s really interesting to one, see the potential end goal, but also to understand where people potentially are in the journey and the steps that need to be taken. I think it’s great that we’ve agreed we probably need to collaborate around this to get some consistency and some standardisation into it and that seems like a good step.
As with all of these sessions, it isn’t about necessarily deciding what the solutions are, but I think there’s a sense of community, there’s a sense of we’re all in this together, we’re all trying to achieve the same stuff here. And if we can do it together then there is more value in that.
GEORGE STEVENSON I think we may have come across a new undocumented feature in Teams. Because when I was on the call this morning I put my hand up and then I found that it had been taken down. And Victoria Finn put in the notes that she’d had exactly that same experience. And Chris, you said that as well earlier.
CHRIS MILLING Yeah, I was waiting patiently and I thought did I just unmute myself, or did I put my hand down as well. I wasn’t sure.
RICHARD FREER There’s just another glitch in Teams, and believe me there are many.
DAVID POAT Right, hopefully people have found this meeting useful and interesting, thanks to everyone that’s contributed. Just, and I say this every time, but in terms of the topics that we talk about. If there are things that you think would be value in discussing in this sort of forum, then please let George, myself or Richard know and we’ll happily put those items on the agenda. And we can enrich the conversations with the things that you want to talk about. But it sounds like we’ve got some good thoughts, it sounds like we’ve got a way forward.
CHAT
Benedicta Anetekhai (External)
Hi David, great share and I am very interested in that schedule. Can i please ask where you save your documents? CDE/EDMS or Document management system?
Afam Unaka (External)
We are closer to where David is
Benedicta Anetekhai (External)
The building safety team receive and become the 'owner' of building information post handover in my organisation. We have a building safety checklist that must be completed and handed over to me as the 'owner' of the Golden Thread' library