Development Working Group Meeting 26-09-2025

BIM4HOUSING DEVELOPMENT WORKING GROUP MEETING 26-09-2025

GEORGE STEVENSON Is there anybody here who’s not been to any of our meetings before? Malcolm, where are you from?

MALCOLM RAMSAY I’m from South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.

GEORGE STEVENSON Let me open up by explaining what we’re doing today. We’ve had four BIM4Housing workshops already this week where we’ve been working on safety critical assets which I’ll explain in a moment. (shares screen). Not everything that we’re doing in BIM4Housing is around fire safety, it may appear that that’s what we’re doing. But what we’re trying to do is look at information management from a particular purpose in a context. And fire and building safety is obviously a critical part of that, so that’s one of the reasons that we’ve concentrated on it.

And what we’re now trying to do is look at how we can have a range of different software applications that are being verified against what we’re trying to get out of them. A relatively new one that we’re working with is a company called One Trace, but there’s lots of different really good survey applications that what we want to do is then understand how they’re being used and make sure that there is consistency in terms of how inspections and things are being done. Also, we’ve been exploring how we can give the fire services better information. And from what we understand one of the challenges that the fire services have got is the locations of hydrants and also the locations where they can bring the appliances into.

There is something that, as I understand, some people are doing now, over and above the secure information boxes, they are developing emergency response plans. And i’ve got an example of that that I can show if anybody is interested. And then a thing that we’ve discussed at the last meeting was coming up with a standardised way of describing what information is required to satisfy Regulation 38 so supply chains aren’t being pulled all over the place being asked for different things by different people. So one of the challenges with that is that people have got different consultants who are often providing advice to them.

And they’re doing a great job, but if they’re asking for information to be provided or structured in different ways, then it makes it very difficult for the supply chain to be able to manage that. So, one of the things that we want to try and do is provide more standardisation of information. And also make sure that everything is then coordinated to avoid rework and misinterpretation. I’m going to stop there and just throw it open to the group to have a discussion around those two things. Vic, you’ve been speaking to the fire authorities. That monthly meeting, I’ve tried to join it a couple of times and it’s not happened.

VICTORIA FINN Are you still not getting on it? I've been on it since, so it seems to be still happening.

GEORGE STEVENSON So, what sort of thing were they contributing?

VICTORIA FINN Basically it’s a drop in for people to ask questions. so you can drop in and see what people are asking, or if you’ve got something yourself you can ask the questions. And generally when I’ve been on it people are tending to ask to clarify the PEEPs information. For instance because it seems like different officers are probably asking for different things. I’ve had an officer come and have a look at some of our blocks and she wanted the plans laminated so that they don’t get messy or wet in a fire situation. And others have actually said well actually it’s easier if they’re not because you can’t fold them up and put them in your pocket and go to a floor and have a look or whatever because if they’re laminated they’re stiff.

So there seems to be different approaches. That seems to be some of what’s coming out from the meetings, so clarification on that. I think the amount of information on plans is something that keeps coming out because people are trying to put too much on one plan now. So you’re talking about the cutoff points for your electric, gas and water, they’re trying to put that on the fire service plans with all of the key information and it’s just a bit too much. So we’re separating the plans out, it seems more people are having separate plans for where the cutoff points are, as to where all the services are, to where your different plans for your sprinklers and your alarms.

So that’s been a lot of the conversation, but also it’s been about call outs. There’s been a lot of callouts where there have been a toaster going on fire or whatever and the fact is the RPs are the registered providers of the PAPs and not knowing that this is going on because people are calling themselves. The fire service expect you to know when somebody is called out to an HRB and why, but often it goes under the radar direct to them and they don’t know. These are the things that have been coming out in those conversations.

GEORGE STEVENSON Can anybody else speak to that at all? How are you finding things with the information in your secure information boxes?

NIKKI BARROW I’m going to come in from a consultant’s perspective here because obviously I see a lot of different buildings from a lot of different housing providers etc. And actually we’re finding from our perspective going in that actually the SIB contents is not where it should be, it’s not to the NFCC guidance. And there’s a lot of information lacking in there and I don’t really understand why because, don’t get me wrong, I’m not on the other side of the coin, I’m not an RP or a PAP or anything like that. But ultimately the guidance is really clear as to what needs to be included and what should be in there. There is even a kind of templar example at the bottom of the guidance that says this is what…

And it’s really easy to build, I’ve kind of built a document for us to be able to give clients when we are instructed to say this is it in a nutshell. I can build your plans, I can build your building, that’s not a problem. But I don’t understand why there seems to be a lot of lacking information as far as the SIBs are concerned.

VICTORIA FINN Yeah, there seems to be confusing information about the two folders as well. So having the lobby folder and we’ve got two folders in ours and again that was quite prescriptive from the Regulator’s point of view. But it seems that very rarely do people have a lobby folder from when I spoke to others. And when the fire service have come and inspected ours before we put the lobby folders in nobody even questioned the fact that they weren’t in there. We’ve put them in since but there’s been no mention when they’ve seen them since that they’re in there. So, I don’t know if people are using lobby folders or not.

GEORGE STEVENSON For anybody that isn’t aware, I think this is what you’re referring to. I don’t know whether there is an updated version of this, this is National Fire Chiefs Council. It’s 4 years old but I think it’s pretty good. There’s the emergency response pack which I’ll show you an example of one of those that’s been recently given to me. And also the content of the box. So, you should have a plan like that that let’s them know where they can park.

NIKKI BARROW That gives you hydrant information as well so there should be symbols on there for hydrants in that plan as well.

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely, but what I’ve been talking with one of the fire services and there is a plan of where all of the fire hydrants are. Because that fire hydrant may not be available or may already being used, so they want to know where all of the fire hydrants are. And it may be that in a busy area…that’s the impression I get.

NIKKI BARROW Some of them are privately owned as well. And again, a lot of people don’t understand that if you’ve got a privately owned hydrant you’re actually responsible for the maintenance of that and to obviously get a competent person out and to maintain that on an annual basis as well. And again, that kind of falls by the wayside because a lot of people just assume that all hydrants are publicly owned and that’s where the fire service go out and maintain those. And they do those with the publicly owned ones, but they won’t do it with the privately owned ones.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s a really good point, we’ll pick that up. What this is doing here is giving you an elevational view, but these are the things that you’re supposed to indicate on the floor plan. So you need a floor plan which is amazing that we’re still having to say that. And then these are the main things that need to be indicated on it. So what we’re doing at the moment is trying to tie this back into Regulation 38 so that we’ve got that as a comprehensive thing. I’ll just show you, this is one that Clyde are using and there are a couple of different companies. This is an emergency response plan.

I’m not clear as to whether this replaces what’s in the SIB or whether this is in addition to it, because it’s holding very similar information. I think that’s quite clean. Vic, you were talking about too much information, what do you think of that?

VICTORIA FINN That looks quite clean to me. I think it’s the strategy plans that the fire service want and they’ve actually prescribed what they want to see on there with regards to the key. And that will also have AOVs on it etc., but it doesn’t have some of the information this has got on. So if you try to combine the two I think it would be too much. So what I’d say is the one the fire service wants with their key on and then the extra information to that should be on this one. There is a little bit of a crossover there by the look of it.

GEORGE STEVENSON OK, that’s fine, in fact that actually can be done by having different views of the same information as well. Vic, have you got something there that you could share with us, now now, but have you got an example that you could share with us and we can distribute?

VICTORIA FINN Yeah, I’ll send something over.

GEORGE STEVENSON Who else is a landlord that might be able to contribute to this? The idea is that it’s a working group, you’re supposed to be working,

SIMON FULLARD I do know like for life, I know Andy quite well and to be honest his plans are probably better than quite a few others that I’ve actually employed to do similar PIB drawings, SIB drawings. They are quite detailed, but he will do anything to your requirements, but these are probably one of the best. I’ve used Multivista and Gerda and they’re not quite as good as these, to be honest, and he seems to be fairly competitive. Also like you say with the overview plans you can mark it up as best as possible with all of the fire hydrants in the locations and everything else.

GEORGE STEVENSON What we’re basically promoting is that there should be just a view of the master asset information model, so the drawing is a view. Therefore if people then, for example, are carrying out any work on some of these areas, anything that they update can then be viewed in whatever that tool is.

SIMON FULLARD That’s it, and also you should make it available to the LFB on their online HRB portals if it is an HRB.

GEORGE STEVENSON The other thing that we’re doing at the moment…we’re also capturing 360 photos. And the 360 photos then enable you to then verify the information that’s in the SIB. So if that’s appropriate we can share those. Is there anything else that anybody is interested in on that or shall I go onto the next one? If you’re interested in being part of that discussion about standardised asset data or standardised requirements for supply chains, if you put in the chat ‘standardisation’ we’ll invite you to the workshops that we’re doing and you can then contribute to that.

I’d also like to know if you’re using, we obviously want as many of the different software vendors as possible to be compatible with what we’re doing. And one of the big challenges is the applications like Riskbase and Plan Radar and One Trace and Bolster and things like that, they’re very good systems but the challenge is that if everybody sets up the inspection requirements differently then we end up with inconsistent information. And part of what we’re trying to do is standardise the way that fire door inspections are done, ventilation inspections are done and things like that. So that we’ve got a degree of consistency so that there is then a check.

That can also go out to procurement people as well so that when they’re procuring inspections and surveys it doesn’t drop to the lowest common denominator. So if you are using any applications, there’s new ones all the time, that One Trace one is one that I’d not come across until 4 or 5 months ago. So if you are using any of those sorts of applications, would you mind putting in the chat what applications that you’re using. Or what applications the people that you’re employing are using, that’s probably a better way of saying it.

We’ve got a company called Morta that we’re working with now, they’ve come into the group. They provide an alternative to spreadsheets, so it’s a database driven thing. And what we’re trying to do is use that as part of the change management process. So that’s something that we can show you some examples of, probably in the next meeting. Another thing that we’ve been promoting is the use of data engineering and AI to be able to take information and then bring it into something that is a bit simpler to understand than the guide.

So the safety critical asset information that we were working on the last couple of days, typically for each of the asset types we’re looking at maybe 20 pages of detailed information which I can show you an example. But what we need to do is make that more consumable, so we’re going to be using AI over the next month to simplify those things, but without losing the detail, which is quite a challenge. And we’re asking if people are interested in participating in that, to be able to help shape what questions are being asked about smoke dampers, for example. Why do you need to know that information? And do you need to know, not just about the smoke damper but the wall that it’s going in to.

And there’s a range of different ways in which experts in the community are already using AI to create agents and tools to do things. So we want to try and create the environment for that to be communicated. So if you’re interested in either looking at data engineering or looking at AI then if you put ‘AI’ in the chat we’ll invite you to the next workshop. Steve Coppin, do you have anything to contribute on that at all? The joining together of things. Maybe that’s not the best topic to bring you in on.

STEPHEN COPPIN No it isn’t because you know that I’m involved with the design specifications and basically I’m not close enough with the way clients are not procuring the supply chain. They’re all relying on the principal contractor which is wrong, to do all the necessary, rather than dictate what they’re going to get. And this is part of the problem down the line. And i’m talking major contractors, without giving the game away. I’m talking the top 5 contractors in the UK. They tend to keep it all under their umbrella, what they’re doing.

And this is part of the challenge is having somebody to ascertain what they’re changing on the design, let alone are they doing what they should be doing as such conforming to. Because the problem is there is now a liability on the Building Control approval, legally. They can sign off all of these buildings left, right and centre, but the evidence needs to be there by the duty holders.

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely. Denson, what do you do?

DENSON MUTARAH I work for a subcontractor, we do rain screen doors and windows in kitchen…

GEORGE STEVENSON Are you on the IT side of things?

DENSON MUTARAH No, I’m not, I am actually wanting to find a bit more how we can better our IT systems with the way that things are moving and so much workload. In terms of T I am just digesting and learning from you guys.

GEORGE STEVENSON This agenda was put together in August for this meeting to give you a report back, but the BIM4Housing guidance on safety critical assets which is on the BIM3Housing website. We’ve been doing a lot of work in that area over the last 4 years and we’ve got detailed information on the safety critical assets. Let me just show you and example of that. When we started with this one of the challenges was actually learning what information people need about the individual safety critical assets.

So when we’re asking people what information do you need to know about a dry riser or a sprinkler system, it was actually quite difficult for people to answer that question. Not because they didn’t know, it was difficult to actually articulate it because they said it depends. They needed to know the context. So we had a series of working groups on both in person and also virtual. (shares screen). And all of those people there are developers, these are all manufacturers, so all people that are sitting round the table sharing their knowledge. These are all designers and there are operations people. And we brought them together to look at the various different assets and we asked a common set of questions.

What risks does a particular asset mitigate? What do people do to assets to stop them from working? What information do we need about them to ensure it performs? What tasks and methods and procedures are needed so that we can make sure that things are done properly? The levels of competence that’s needed? And how do you track change? And we did that for 12 main safety critical assets: AOVs, fire alarms etc. And the level of detail is quite significant and then also on some of them we produced standardised fire door inspections or inspection guides. This is all available on the BIM4Housing website. And we’ve recently done the same for fire dampers, fire stopping and things like that.

And then this last week we’ve actually gone through for each of those different asset types, we’ve grouped them by sort of function. So smoke control, compartmentation and we ran workshops the last 2 days. We’ll be producing the outputs from that, they’re all recorded. We’ve updated the guidance documentation and we’re taking that and we’re going to turn it into something that can be applied using Large Language Models. So if you’re somebody that’s interested in understanding how you can have information glued together to be able to audit compartmentation, for example.

I’m now going to open it out to the group. Is that something you think what we’re doing is worthwhile? The challenge is that nobody knows everything and even if you go along to an expert what we’ve found is they will interpret things differently according to their experience which is obviously the right thing to do. But when you can bring them together with other people that are also experts, we actually flush out quite a lot of things that are inconsistencies. So the one that we held on Wednesday morning for fire doors in itself was brilliant from that perspective because we’d got some very experienced people on there. They didn’t necessarily agree, but they ended up agreeing.

A lot of that was a real good way of capturing knowledge. Similarly, yesterday we were doing sprinklers and we had a guy that’s spent the last 10 years doing sprinkler systems. So his was a really interesting perspective because he was questioning and challenging some of the things…or updating. He said that the guidance we produced 2 years ago was excellent, but he was able to go through and update it with things that could be enhanced. So all of those are being updated. The other aspect that we’ve not done yet is lifts. So we’ve got a group about to start, we’ve got a new recruit who’s a lift expert and he’s going to be pulling together people that are interested in that.

So if you’re interested in getting involved in the lift side of thing put ‘lift’ in the chat and we can recruit you for that. Has anybody else got any questions? What would you like from the other members of the group? Have you got any topics that you feel that we ought to be covering?

VICTORIA FINN To me George, but I don’t know if it’s going to be good for this group, for me it’s the confusion around Category A andB works for the high-rise blocks with regards to the building regulations and what’s included and what’s not. It tends to be causing quite a bit of confusion, especially with RPs. I don’t know if anybody has got any further information they can add to that.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think that’s a really good question. Does anybody have an answer? Do you want to just explain what Category A and Category B is?

VICTORIA FINN Category A works are mainly structural works or anything that’s going to affect the compartmentation of the buildings. Making new flats, making the building higher etc. Category B works generally falls into what doesn’t come into Category A, unless it’s exempt and anything that’s exempt would be covered under probably a scheme which would be applying for building regulations anyway. Or like accredited contractors who are doing the works, so for glazing or doors or what have you. But there is quite a bit of confusion about other works are in Category B that we might need to be aware of and probably don’t realise.

GEORGE STEVENSON I’ve got something to contribute on that, but I don’t want to cut across what other people are saying as well. Has anybody got an answer to what Vic was raising there?

NIKKI BARROW I think to be perfectly honest what’s important is that really the Building Safety Regulator needs to be a little bit more specific about what they are categorising as Category A and Category B, especially when it comes to HRBs. Because the long and the short of it is it’s that determination of the word significant, significant works. Well, what’s significant to one person isn’t significant to another and vice versa. So ultimately it’s about them getting their ducks in a row and being more specific in their language as to what they want categorised in that A and B categories.

Because otherwise there is going to be this ambiguity in the industry with regards to what is in each of those categories. So I don’t think you’re going to necessarily get a definitive answer, unless we get a little bit more specific information from the Regulator with reference to actually what they want included in each of those categories, rather than just saying if it’s significant works it should be Category A and if it’s not signifiant works well, that leaves us with basically making our own determination of what’s significant and what’s not.

GEORGE STEVENSON This is really interesting Nikki, because I think it’s pretty widely understood that the Regulator isn’t going to be much more specific and explicit than they are because they don’t want to take on that responsibility. It’s similar with Building Control, they don’t want to take on that responsibility. So what we’ve got is a vacuum. Now, what do we do about that? We can bounce around complaining about it or alternatively if we’ve got an expert group like this and the other people that we’ve got within the community, what we should do is go back and say this is our expert opinion, collectively, as to what is a Category A and a Category B.

And these are the circumstances under which we think it should be applied and shouldn’t be applied. And then we can then feed that back to the Regulator because it’s difficult to, for example, Withenshaw to go back to the Regulator and say this is what we think. But if we collectively, if we’ve got Metropolitan and Camden and people like that all saying the same thing, then that is much more powerful. If I just put this in context, I did a workshop a couple of weeks ago where Dame Judith Hackitt was the keynote. But in that group there was Cross…and one of the things that was really coming out from that is there is a big talk about competency, a lot of it was around competency.

And although that’s absolutely right, I think we do need to get to that, it’s also the case that what we need to do is have something where there is more standardisation of approach. Because the challenge is supply chain members, they just don’t know what they’ve got to do and what they haven’t got to do. What Vic has just talked about there, which is approved schemes and whether they are accretion, if you listen to the session that we had on fire doors the other day, there are no accredited schemes that mean that you don’t need to report to the Regulator. And that’s because none of the approved schemes will take on that responsibility.

BM Trada, for example, which a lot of people think is an approved scheme isn’t because it’s not rigorous enough apparently, according to the experts, to actually get down to the level of individual operators. So one of the things that I think we could do is feed this into the standardisation group. And I’m looking for volunteers to join that, so if you think this is an important thing to do put ‘standardisation’ into the chat and we can incorporate you in it. And what we’ll do is we’ll use the subject matter experts in the different disciplines to actually come up with the way of doing it because I think that’s what we need to do.

DENSON MUTARAH Yes, I have, mine’s probably going to be linked to the Ai but since we have expertise in the group. Part of my job role is to check for compliance on documents, let’s say the technical submittals we’ve already issued meshed in with the specification and also the contract we’ve actually sold. Is there an easy way to do it, or would it be through AI? Because also with the checking, also basis on the regulations, guidance and other sources.

GEORGE STEVENSON I’ll give you my opinion. As well as being the chair of BIM3Housing I also run a software company, so we use AI. But we use AI very cautiously…

DENSON MUTABAH You kind of use it as 75% and then you do the final check just to make sure. Because AI I suppose can pick up on the things even thought about, but you need to verify it because AI can make up things.

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s exactly right. I’ll give you an example of that, one of the things that we’re using it for at the moment, we’ve got a large project where we’ve got asset types that have been created in BIM models with Uniclass information. What we need to do is put against that. Now, the product data that was in the O&Ms wasn’t adequate. So what we’re doing is going onto the manufacturer’s websites and getting the product information. And we’re using AI to be able to do that extraction.

But what was interesting, one of my guys was telling me the other day, what we’re doing is we also need the Uniclass code against that product to be able to do the matching between the asset type and the product. And it was returning a Uniclass code, but not only was it the wrong Uniclass code for that asset. And you wouldn’t know that was the case unless you know what you were looking for. What it was also doing, it wasn’t a valid Uniclass code at all. And Uniclass has got 8 digits and you’ve got to know what you’re doing to be able to identify that was the case.

So what we’re now doing, we’ve built what’s called a RAG, it’s a private sort of LLM, to be able to do that checking. So that’s really what I was saying at the beginning, that if you are interested in learning more about how that works. The key thing with any AI is the knowledge of what you want to do, that’s the most valuable bit. And if you’ve got domain knowledge of what you actually want to achieve, then it means that you can check what’s being delivered and then make sure that its actually that the answers is the right answer. And then we’ve got something that we can use.

So again, if you’re interested in that area. I think it’s going to be an absolutely critical part of what we do, but we mustn’t be reliant on it. It’s got to be guarded.

DENSON MUTABAH I agree and I’m definitely interested because I was in a facade conference where most of the consultants, they are building their own in-house and they’re doing the same thing. Obviously they cannot rely on AI, they do the checking. So the AI will pick up on things that a human could miss and they just double check it and things are verified to make sure it is compliant.

GEORGE STEVENSON If you’re using AI to do that type of compliance checking you’ve really got to make sure that the dataset that it’s applying is one that is right. That’s the reason we’ve gone through the BIM4Housing guidance in significant detail because what we needed to do was make sure that the information itself was adequately robust before we started training a Large Language Model on it.

PAUL WOMACK I was going to mention collaborative reporting on Cross UK. It’s an organisation, it’s a confidential reporting system to do with anything with an issue with a building. Whether it’s an individual item of a subject or it’s a group of people like us. It’s not just about buildings itself and problems with structure of a building or way things operate within a building. It’s also if there are concerns regarding management. We’re looking at ones that we have concerns with, senior managers within organisations aren’t aware that of their roles and responsibilities.

We’re also potentially looking at one, following on from the meeting we had this week, in regards that we don’t believe that we’re getting all of the information that’s required from Regulation 38. So it’s those sort of things that we can go they will have a look at it, review it, it’s given a reference number and then it’s published. I don’t think it’s actually actionable…I can’t remember who it goes to. I know that it’s sent out to various different bodies.

GEORGE STEVENSON I think that’s one of the challenges. The reporting itself of any problems, the way that the Building Safety Act has been set up, there’s nobody to report anything to. And actually people like us can’t report anything, the only people that can report are the tenants or the residents. I’ve been told that if, for example, somebody notice something then you can’t report it to the Regulator because the way that the regulations have been set up, the only people that can report are the residents. Is that true?

VICTORIA FINN Yeah, it’s true unless it’s a safety concern of the building itself, so if something has happened with the building itself you’ve got to report that. But I think with regards to practices and management etc, then no as far as I’m aware.

STEPHEN COPPIN Basically, as you rightly say, the setup is purely for HRBs to report mandatory occurrence reporting. And it’s on the principal designer during the design and it’s on the principal contractor during construction. During the operation and occupation it’s on the PAP and the AP for that particular building and with the residents to actually flag things up.

And if they’re not getting cooperation from that PAP and AP accordingly they can report to the BSR directly about a fire spread risk or a potential structural failure or collapse. Those are two aspects that only considering, structural failure or collapse and/or fire spread. That’s the only two things that BSR are focusing on. Irrespective we all look at things holistically and there’s hundreds of risks re buildings without going on about, that’s all that they’re focusing on.

GEORGE STEVENSON Where I’m coming from on this, for example, fire risk assessments where the fire risk assessment raises a particular action that’s needed and nobody does anything about it. And there’s no transparency it appears as to who should be doing that.

STEPHEN COPPIN Well that comes under the Fire Safety Act and the Fire Safety Order. That’s where the fire rescue services come in. As you know I’m old school, fire brigade. The fire rescue service are supposed to intervene, but again it’s all reactive, it’s not prevention.

GEORGE STEVENSON How would they know?

STEPHEN COPPIN Again back to you mentioned the role of the RP, responsible person. Where the information about fire safety, the precious Regulation 38, has to be provided at the end of the project of any changes relating to fire safety information. There needs to be that audit trail of providing that information. And it’s a principal contractor’s responsibility to provide that via their subcontractors to that RP.

And for the RP to confirm in writing that that information is sufficient in order that they have got the information and then can carry out the fire risk assessments for the ongoing maintenance and operation of that building. They’ve got to have that audit trail from the completion of any refurb, alteration, doesn’t matter if it’s HRB or non HRB. This is under fire safety. There’s massive contentions with this, the way it’s been written i silos by the Home Office and the HSE with DWP as it was.

GEORGE STEVENSON So that’s why I’m suggesting that we as a group, if there is good practice then that’s something that we should be doing. I’ll just show you something else. Some of you have been on the BIM In Asset Management meetings. And one of the things that we’ve been doing, this is another resource that we’ve bene creating. Over the last three meetings we’ve been doing surveys to really understand the maturity of the industry and ask questions to see whether, for example, senior management, who control the budgets, actually understand their duties under the BSA. And 89% of the people said that their senior managers had a proper understanding of what they needed to have.

There’s also things like we asked questions like are people checking the contents of the fire & emergency file on an ongoing basis to make sure that they’re still correct? And a fair old percentage said that they were, but there’s plenty that said that they weren’t. Here’s another one: should the fire risk assessor read the fire & emergency file before they complete? And 95% believe that the fire risk assessment should include that check. So, there are some things in here that are quite useful to say, for example, how often should an AOV be checked that they are operational?

And then also, if you’ve got a fire risk assessment should you be checking above the suspended ceiling to ensure that the compartments there? Now, Ι think everybody said that they should. And also should the responsible person have a record of the safety critical assets that haven’t been inspected? And 100% of people thought that that should be the case.

VICTORIA FINN Our fire risk assessments will advise to go and get those checks done, but the various assessments themselves don’t include going in to the loft space and checking the compartmentation. So we’re on quite a big programme at the moment of going round to do those checks and putting the stickers on where there are penetrations to say that they have been sealed adequately. But it’s a big, big piece of work, but I do find that quite a few risk assessors don’t actually do it, they just advise it.

STEPHEN COPPIN They’re not competent, that’s why. They’re not actually trained enough so they don’t actually know what they’re looking at beyond the dry risers, wet risers in the plant room, everything. They’ve just been doing risk assessments of the common areas.

GEORGE STEVENSON At the conference that Paul and I were at Dame Judith said that there was one where the design for a sprinkler system, the pump wasn’t adequate for the building. So it could only generate the pressure to get up to the 13th floor and there’s 20 floors. And the installer apparently knew that that was the case, but they still installed the pump and didn’t do anything about it. That’s quite shocking and I think that’s a really good learning thing that we should have. But when we were talking about that yesterday on the sprinkler workshop what they were saying was that in London some of the water companies are turning down the pressure because they get less leaks that way.

And therefore some of the sprinkler systems that were commissioned and were working with the right pressure are no longer doing so. That sort of questions should when sprinkler systems are tested on an annual basis, should the pressure be checked at that stage? I would have thought it should. So, standardisation of this sort of thing. If you’re in agreement as a development group, because you are actually representing the development side of things, you’re quite influential on this. Davina, where are you from?

DAVINA BODKIN JACQUES I’m from MTVH, I’m in the same team as Paul Womack. I am a building safety manager, I’ve been in the organisation about 8 weeks now.

GEORGE STEVENSON Should we go back to the agenda? Is anybody being held up at any Gateway reviews or anything like that?

PAUL WOMACK Gateway 2 is something like a 42-week wait.

GEORGE STEVENSON Have you got any of those, Paul?

PAUL WOMACK No, luckily enough at the moment I am not dealing with any of them myself.

GEORGE STEVENSON But the organisation is?

PAUL WOMACK Yes and this was about 6 weeks ago, so it may be longer now.

GEORGE STEVENSON Have you got more that one?

PAUL WOMACK I imagine that we have, but I think from what we’ve heard the other week that we were at with Dame Judith Hackitt was that it’s not necessarily the fault of the Regulator because the information that they’re requesting is very, very basic and people aren’t giving them the right information. Hence they’re sending back the request saying you need to give us the basic information. So it’s a failing on the people who are requesting the submissions.

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely and we had that both from Bureau Veritas who are one of the organisations that is acting on behalf of the Regulator to actually do the audits. And she was saying it’s quite shocking, some of the submissions. And I think that’s where a lot of the blame is being placed on the Regulator, I mean there is no question that they’ve got problems, but it’s not something that is entirely down to them. Has anybody else got any delays?

NIKKI BARROW We’ve experienced significant delays and actually it’s not because the information isn’t correct, it’s not because the basic information isn’t there. And I don’t know why it is if I’m perfectly honest with you. I think it was only last week that I saw, and this isn’t a client of ours, but L&Q had waited 13 months for a Gateway 2 approval and they’d finally got it. And that was with minimal requests for information going back and forth between the Regulator and L&Q. So you kind of go yes, there’s obviously those people out there that aren’t putting together a detailed enough application or putting together the information that the Regulator wants.

But then there is the flip side of that that actually we’re seeing some applications that are very comprehensive, that have a lot of detail in them, and they’re still waiting 38-39 weeks for an approval. So you kind of them go what is the holdup with that? And kind of flipping this over to safety case reports as well. I know there are companies out there that are kind of running up to the 52-week marker currently with no request for information and no contact from the Regulator at all. So what is happening with those? What’s going on? Because if there’s no requests for information then surely the information that they need is there, they would have known that within the last 50 weeks.

GEORGE STEVENSON The impression that I get, I’ve been to a couple of sessions with the regulation and also with Tim Galloway, the feedback that he’s given and also Neil Hope-Collins. He’s saying that 70% of the information in many, he gives loads of examples of things that are fundamentally wrong. So I think you’re absolutely right Nikki that some people are doing the job properly, but the system is being clogged up by people that aren’t.

NIKKI BARROW Well hopefully with the new information out last week saying that actually new applications are not going to be going into that backlog, they’re now going to feed through to the MHCLG and this kind of transfer of the Regulator from the HSE over. Hopefully that will kind of sort it out. But then for me I go what’s now to stop people that are in that waiting cue resubmitting their application. Yes, paying for that if absolutely necessary, to go through that new process with the application that they’ve already submitted. And then that getting clogged up with people who are not providing the correct information or not providing extensive applications. What’s to stop that now happening?

VICTORIA FINN We submitted one of our blocks for ? 1 hr 7 mins 9 secs replacement and I’m aware that took many, many months to get through. And the information that was requested was quite onerous considering it was ? replacement. And it seemed to want to include quite a lot of what we already had in the safety case. I actually had a safety case report for it that I probably could have sent through, but they didn’t want the full safety case report, they just wanted information that was in that. Sometimes I find the terminology for things, so the Regulator may call it one thing, fire risk safety file or whatever and it’s what then is determined from that. It would be good if what they asked for then was prescriptive in what that meant, what was expected within that. Because we do all have different terminology for things. That was one thing we found with our ? replacement scheme.

On the building safety case, I put my two highest blocks through and it did take 9 months to get them through. However, they were coming back for information and I did actually get the building assessment certificates for them which was a very long process and ver relieved when we got them. But what we’ve been talking about earlier as well, you know the management and how we manage and how we glue information together. You can’t get away without doing that and get a building assessment certificate at the end. Because what I went through to prove and evidence the way we manage and we’ve got the Golden Thread going through everything, you really need to be doing that in order to get building assessment certificates.

There’s that many teams involved that have to look at that information. And so it will come out once you have to put your safety cases in, if that’s not going o now. And really we should have been doing that for a number of years already to make sure that’s embedded. So at this stage we’re quite late in the game in talking about it, but obviously it’s where we are.

GEORGE STEVENSON What you just said there is music to my ears really because you’ve been through the process and you’ve learned quite a lot from that. So when you’re then going into the next one you know at least some of the questions that need to be asked. And then if we could also feed what you’ve learned Vic, along with other people, if we could feed that into some sort of knowledge base then it’s going to make it a lot easier for everybody.

DENSON MUTARAH Yesterday I went to the CWCT AGM meeting and the hot topic was the Gateway 2 Building Safety Act. We had Neil Hope-Collins from the Building Safety Regulator and he did a presentation and various questions were asked from facade engineers, architects and other consultants. So, one thing that all of you guys have already commented on is to make the evidence clear. The problem is with this industry we are so good when we’ve been in it for years where we package everything, we do the tests, tech subs, drawings, everything and it works, we did it for 20 years.

But the problem is that this industry does not know how to tell the story, to simplify, to be clear for somebody who is actually reviewing it. You just have to make it clear, so straight to the point what they need to see, what you’re doing, what’s the regulations you’re covering. So within that the question was asked if the BSR are going to do a guide on how they want to see this information, a kind of generic guide of how they want this information. So, they said that they would do that…

The next point you talked about 70% of publications not going through information. They can put everything together, but then they’re not explaining it properly. If someone actually puts in the compliant information and it’s getting rejected. And also if you go on the website FAQ. What Victoria just mentioned about lessons learnt, I think that’s really good because at the end of the day as an industry we cannot be making the same errors in terms of presenting the evidence. If the industry knows we can all share this information. I think that’s a good start so we should definitely do that, And obviously evidence of the competence of the people who are on the projects.

GEORGE STEVENSON One of the things that’s worth you knowing is in BIM In Asset Management we’ve actually been doing work around standardising the way that health & safety files for O&Ms are structured. The reason we’re doing that is that when we go through and do reviews of information often it’s all over the place. And often it’s collected by work package rather than by system. And unless you know which work package a particular elements in, which as a contractor you probably know, but certainly someone coming along to it clean wouldn’t know.

For example, if you’re looking at doors, which work package are the doors in? We’ve got a project that we’re reviewing at the moment and the doors are in three different work packages. One of part of the facade, another you’ve got the internal fit out and things like that and then you’ve got what was in the original base build. So there are different work packages. And then they’ve not been aligned in a standardised way, so the door schedules are different and they’re not referencing things properly either. So as a positive thing what we’ve been doing over the last 18 months, we’ve been working with the HSE to produce a standardised structure for both health & safety files and O&Ms.

So if anybody is interested in that work we’ve got some templates. If you put ‘health & safety files’ in the chat I can plug you in to the work that’s been going on it that area. What we’re also doing is looking at this from a point of view of making the technology make it easier for people. Because we understand why contractors do that, they want to allocate a particular work package to that contractor. And they want them to produce the O&Ms, therefore the information is going to come back. And if the documents are held in a database instead of simply as folders, the documents themselves can be tagged with metadata which then allows you to slice and dice them in different ways.

As Active Plan we’ve done that as a tool, but that’s a methodology, so that is something that A-site and other people we encourage them to do as well because we need to be able to find information easily. I’ll give you an example, on this project that we’re auditing at the moment, all of the work packages weren’t even down by what the work package was, it was the name of the company. So therefore there was probably 30 different companies working on this particular project and you had to know what that particular contractor was doing to be able to find the information about what you were doing. This is a very prestigious project that you’d think they’d get it right.

But that’s the sort of thing, if we can get more standardisation on that and it’s going to make it a lot easier to find things. These are the points that David was making, that’s a really important one. The earlier commitment to do the detailed M&E design and smoke ventilation design to mitigate the cost…are we seeing people actually doing that now? On the projects that people are involved with are we seeing that the design…because basically the design is supposed to be complete before construction starts, that’s the whole idea. But are we seeing any moves towards that?

VICTORIA FINN It wouldn’t get through the Gateways, would it? If it wasn’t done.

GEORGE STEVENSON Sadly I think it is getting through the Gateways because the M&E element of that is often contractor design portion.

VICTORIA FINN I know I’ve picked some of this up, like damper surveys and surveys that I’ve done retrospectively in some of the blocks that are already there. And what I’ve done is I’ve passed the information that I’ve got and what I’m gathering onto our development team to make sure that that’s included in the tenders, this is what we want. And that goes out to tender in the handovers. So you’d expect at tender stage they should be working these up to go through the Gateways, but as you say it doesn’t always happen.

GEORGE STEVENSON You might find this useful. Where the contractors are using BIM to deliver a lot of this stuff, there is a couple of things that you need to be aware of which are complications on that. I think in many client organisations there is a perception that everything goes into the BIM model and if it’s in the BIM model then the detail will come out. In fact something like at least 50% of the things that are required for the Regulation 38 would never get modelled.

And the reason for that is that the systems and products that are actually installed, like electrical and mechanical, there is something called levels of detail. And what often will happen is that the level of detail, for example, of identifying a pump or even dampers is excluded from the project because it’s not considered to be a clash detection requirement. So therefore it never goes in the models. And certainly the detailed information isn’t modelled. Actuators, for example, that I think are a pretty important part of the components, door closers you seldom see modelled.

They’ll be there in a schedule, but does the schedule actually match and map to the information in drawings, So what often will happen is you get a lot of disconnected information and therefore a lot you get at handover won’t be complete. The second big lesson which again is not really understood is that it you’re expecting the team to give you a BIM model at the end of the project, there is no such thing as a BIM model. You will have probably 10 BIM models, you’ll have 20 BIM models, because each discipline will create their own model and it then becomes federated. So from a visual point of view and a clash detection point of view, that’s all fine.

And we can take that as a federated model and use it. But it’s important to understand that that’s the case. Now, where that becomes difficult is if you’ve got a project that runs for longer than probably 2 years, it will start using a certain version of Revit say, and by the time your project is handed over the version of Revit that they’ve used is no longer compatible with the current version of Revit that you can buy. So unlike things like Word where you can go back and open a Word file that was created in an earlier version of Word, if you try and do that with Revit the likelihood is that it will have errors. And the errors could then cause problems.

So therefore on a contract you should always ask for the model to be updated by the people that are delivering it. So if you’ve got a project that’s being handed over this year you should require them to upgrade it to the current version of Revit.

DIMITRIOS THEODOROU A couple of questions so I can better understand. Does the Regulator mandate the delivery of building information models with respect to fire safety?

GEORGE STEVENSON No,

DIMITRIOS THEODOROU OK, so at the current state as it is what is the delivery as part of the deliverables from the designer as BIM models?

GEORGE STEVENSON That’s really I guess my point that would be determined in the contractual information requirements. There is no legislative requirement to do that. There is a legislative requirement for, in particular on the fire safety, you need to have a floor plan with all of the safety critical items identified on it. But how you create that and how you keep it up-to-date is up to the team.

DIMITRIOS THEODOROU What I’m trying to get to is that as you already know there are standards at this point, mainly ISO 19650 and ISO 7870, that if implemented as part of the deliverables and there is also an IDM and information delivery manual standardised which could be also the outcome of this workgroup as part of the information needs. Then indeed all of the information could be inserted within the BIM model. Not necessarily as geometry, but as information.

It could be documents that are connected to the building information model. The outcome of this is that you have a centralised place where all of the information are kept, a common data environment, based on which everything is updated according to the RIBA plan of work. Where it’s on the construction stage or the delivery stage and so forth. And each person has clear transparency of what was delivered, if it was delivered. You can generate rules, check based on the deliverables and see whether what is delivered is applicable for the next stage.

GEORGE STEVENSON Yeah, I absolutely understand that and I was one of the founding members of what was called the IAI and is now called buildingSMART, so I’m very aware of that process. What I would say is that the competence in the industry of being able to carry out that work is not adequate for people to be able to rely on it, that’s one problem. The second is that invariably when the projects are procured the contracts don’t include the requirement, or indeed the money, for as-built M&M, for example, to be added in. So unless the money is there and unless there is an explicit contractual obligation for them to actually provide that, in my experience it’s not happening.

DIMITRIOS THEODOROU What if it was regulated by the Regulator to be delivered as a deliverable? For each stage of the RIBA plan.

GEORGE STEVENSON We’ve probably had the closest to be able to have that stuff regulated from the work that we started back about 15 years ago, through the BIM Taskforce and all of the different initiatives. The challenge is that most of the standards, including the one that you’ve mentioned there 19650, they’re not as explicit as the original British standards, the 1192 standards, which were far more explicit. And you would need something quite explicit to do that. ISO standards, in my experience, don’t go down to the level of detail that you’ve just outlined,

But that’s not important, the important thing is for us to identify as a collective what information we need to get out and make sure that it is part of the requirements. So I absolutely agree with you that all of the information should be in what I call a BIM model, a better information management environment. Which may have 3D, but it may not. There’s lots of reasons on existing buildings where you don’t need 3D. So therefore I agree with you, it’s an information model that we should be working to, And I’d be very happy to share with you our experiences and what we’re trying to do in making that more rigorous.

I’ve just spent this week going through the new 19650 Part 6 standards which is the safety set. And last night I’ve just given feedback to the HSE on that, so there is a lot of great stuff that we’re doing and we’re contributing to. But I think that you’re right that as a group we ought to be defining what it is that we actually need. And the reason I was just talking there about the situation with the BIM models and Revit, it wasn’t to talk them down. We’re actually a Revit developer, so I’m not denigrating it all. What I’m trying to do is make people aware of what they should be asking for because I think it’s a nonsense.

Another classic example, this other project that we’re working on at the moment, we’ve found that the architect’s removed all of the floor plans from the model, removed all of the sheets, so if you wanted them to, from the model, regenerate the floor plans you can’t do it because they’ve taken that out. And that’s quite common. Now, that may not seem important because you’ve got the drawings and you’ve got them in the O&Ms. But actually we’re now having to go through and regenerate the COBie information because it wasn’t done very well. But we’ve got no space references because they’ve deleted the sheets.

So, these are the sorts of things that we need to learn about as a development group so you know what to ask for. The best people will be delivering the good quality information, but if projects don’t allow for it then that’s a problem.

DIMITRIOS THEODOROU I see your point and thank you for the feedback. I don’t want to prolong the discussion. I will try to DM you on the subject.

GEORGE STEVENSON Absolutely, I’m very happy to have one-to-ones with anybody on this sort of stuff. Good, I hope you found it useful.

CHAT

Simon Fullard

Mostly the One Trace system

James Hood

We are currently using SHINE Compliance for all our monthly compliance checks including fire door inspections.

We use Hilti Fieldwire to record all fire-stopping carried out by contractors.

Nikki Barrow

Software systems:

Twinnedit

One World Lancer

RiskBase

RiskFlag

Cascade-Risk

BlackBoots

I think standardisation will be difficult to achieve unless there is standardisation within the BSR and national FRS's

Chris Milling

I suppose if the regulator is being woolly in the first place, then you should go back and tell them your recommendations and state that is what you are working with unless other regulatory guidance is forthcoming

Victoria Finn

sometimes its terminology with what the regulator asks for and what is understood by that

Nikki Barrow

https://www.constructionleadershipcouncil.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CLC-Guidance-Suite-Building-Control-Approval-Application-for-a-New-Higher-Risk-Building-Gateway-2.pdf

Academic Summary - BIM4Housing Development Working Group Meeting (26-09-2025)

Purpose & Context

• The meeting focused on progress and challenges in information management, fire safety compliance, and standardisation within BIM4Housing’s ongoing initiatives.
• Chaired by George Stevenson, the discussion included contributions from developers, consultants, and regulators exploring how technology, AI, and data structuring can improve building safety processes.

1. Standardisation and Regulation 38 Compliance

• George Stevenson emphasised the need for consistent data structures for Regulation 38 compliance to reduce supply chain confusion: “If they’re asking for information to be structured in different ways, it makes it very difficult for the supply chain to manage.”
• The group discussed emergency response plans, secure information boxes (SIBs), and how these relate to NFCC guidance.
• Victoria Finn and Nikki Barrow reported inconsistencies between fire services and consultants in expectations for SIB contents and the use of lobby folders.

2. Issues with Secure Information Boxes (SIBs) and Fire Service Coordination

• Finn noted varying fire service demands — for instance, laminated vs non-laminated plans — and inconsistency in the amount of data required on a single plan.
• Nikki Barrow highlighted gaps in compliance with NFCC guidance: “We’re finding the SIB contents are not where they should be… there’s a lot of information lacking.”
• Both agreed there is confusion around the function and duplication of documents between SIBs, lobby folders, and emergency response packs.

3. Hydrant Data and Private Responsibilities

• The group noted that not all hydrants are publicly maintained; private hydrants must be maintained by their owners — a responsibility often overlooked.

4. Integration of Digital Tools & AI

• Stevenson described efforts to link fire safety data with software systems (e.g., One Trace, Riskbase, PlanRadar, Bolster).
• He explained a plan to apply AI and data engineering to simplify technical guidance without losing accuracy: “We’re going to be using AI… to simplify those things, but without losing the detail.”
• Members discussed using AI for automated compliance checks — Denson Mutarah described AI as “75% tool, 25% human verification,” with Stevenson stressing the need for verified datasets.

5. Category A and B Works – Regulatory Confusion

• Victoria Finn raised industry confusion around what constitutes Category A vs B works under the Building Safety Regulator.
• Nikki Barrow noted ambiguity in defining “significant works”: “What’s significant to one person isn’t significant to another.”
• Stevenson proposed that BIM4Housing could collectively define and publish industry interpretations to fill the regulatory “vacuum.”

6. Gateway Delays and Regulatory Bottlenecks

• Paul Womack and Nikki Barrow described long waits for Gateway 2 approvals — up to 13 months in some cases.
• Discussion highlighted systemic delays caused by inconsistent or unclear submissions, and the regulator’s limited capacity to process complex data.
• Finn noted confusion around terminology: “It would be good if what they asked for was prescriptive in what that meant, what was expected within that.”

7. Building Safety Act Responsibilities

• Stephen Coppin outlined the fragmented responsibilities between dutyholders under the Building Safety Act: Principal Designer/Contractor (during construction) and Accountable Person (during occupation).
• He highlighted that mandatory occurrence reporting focuses narrowly on structural failure and fire spread, leaving other risks unaddressed.

8. Data Structuring, H&S Files, and BIM Models

• Stevenson discussed ongoing work to standardise health & safety file and O&M structures, aligning with HSE to improve traceability.
• Problems were noted with inconsistent BIM data: multiple models per project (federated but fragmented), incomplete data due to low Level of Detail (LOD), and Revit compatibility issues.
• Dimitrios Theodorou advocated for adoption of ISO 19650 and IDM standards to centralise and connect documents and models.
• Stevenson agreed but noted poor industry competence and inadequate contractual frameworks to support that level of digital maturity.

9. Lessons Learned and Future Initiatives

• The group recognised the value of knowledge-sharing to improve submissions and building safety case quality.
• Stevenson emphasised the role of collective feedback loops to inform regulators and standard-setting bodies: “If we collectively… say this is our expert opinion, that’s much more powerful.”

Emerging Themes

• Persistent fragmentation in safety data and documentation.
• Regulatory ambiguity driving inconsistent interpretation and delay.
• Strong momentum toward AI-assisted compliance, tempered by caution and human oversight.
• Collective intelligence (workshops, surveys, and feedback) as the main vehicle for improvement.

Key Risks & Action Points - BIM4Housing Development Working Group Meeting (26-09-2025)