skip to content

Centre for Digital Built Britain completed its five-year mission and closed its doors at the end of September 2022

This website remains as a legacy of the achievements of our five-year foundational journey towards a digital built Britain
 
CDBB Supporting the BSI BIM Conference 2018

The United Kingdom’s Building Information Modelling [BIM] Standards are a tried and tested way to work more efficiently and effectively in a digital environment. They are helping organisations to improve their performance and reduce their risk by introducing collaborative ways of working ensuring that the same accurate data can be accessed throughout the supply chain. The standardisation of BIM Level 2 has underpinned and created the building blocks for the UK’s journey towards a digital built Britain.

CDBB was therefore delighted to support the BSI BIM Conference in Manchester on the 5th of November. In his opening remark the Chair for the day, CDBB’s David Philp discussed the ongoing progress being made by the Centre and especially the work of the Digital Framework Task Group [led by CDBB to provide coordination of key players in the built environment]. The first outputs of the Group, the Gemini Principles will be released later this month on the CDBB website. The Gemini Principles are effectively the conscience of the national digital twin. Philp noted that “principles matter. If we want the National Digital Twin and its underlying Information Management Framework to be for the public good forever, we need strong founding values to guide them and to start facilitating alignment across the built environment.”

The opening keynote was given by Dr Anne Kemp, the UK Convenor for ISO19650 on the UK’s leadership in construction information management and the transition to international standards. Anne, joined by Paul Shillcock [UK Export for BS EN Iso 19650-2 and co-author of the UK transition guidance] and David Churcher, UK Expert for BS EN ISO 19650 -1 and co-author of the UK transition guidance] illustrated the journey towards ISO19650 and the what that would mean in the context of BIM Level 2.  It was noted that the principles of both BS EN ISO 19650-1 and 2 are founded on the UK’s standards for information Management and will be identifiable to those that are already using BS 1192 and PAS 1192-2.  BS EN ISO 19650 was noted as essentially an internationalisation of the UK’s BIM L2 approach and contains all the same principles and high-level requirements with specific UK content contained in our National Annex.

Beyond terminology and language, the key transitional highlights were summarised by David Churcher as:

  • Lifecyle information principles – project and asset operation
  • More detail of delivery team documents
  • Two types of responsibility matrix – management activities and information management delivery
  • Container ID [file naming] adjusted for industry feedback
  • Clearer step-by-step project information process
  • Common Data Environment (CDE) states – not areas. Status not suitability
  • Volume strategy becomes federation strategy and container breakdown
  • BIM maturity in stages, not levels
  • Employer / supplier becoming appointing / appointed parties
  • Explicit requirement to consider risks
  • Level of information need
  • Transition guidance has been prepared to coincide with the publication of the standards and the UK national annex and more guidance will follow

David Philp, led a presentation on a “Snapshot of the UK, European and international BIM standards programme” joined by Anne Kemp, Patricia Massey and Nick Nisbet. The discussion centred around CEN and ISO standards for:

  • Built environment;
  • Product libraries;
  • Purpose; and
  • Means.

It was noted that BSI holds convenorship (Anne Kemp) at ISO/TC59/SC13 for TF02 – Strategy and business planning – and that significant advances have been made in Tokyo and Beijing over the past month.  And that an overarching framework is being developed to help coordinate the roadmaps of CEN, ISO and buildingSMART.

In terms of the ISO19650 suite it was noted that in early 2020 two European standards, EN ISO 19650-3 and EN ISO 19650-5, are scheduled to be published that will have an impact on publicly available standards PAS 1192-3 (operational expenditure) and PAS 1192-5 (security).

It was also recognised that BIM work in ISO comes from a number of sources:

ISO/TC 59/SC 13 –  "Organization and digitization of information about buildings and civil engineering works, including building information modelling (BIM)" (main BIM committee)

Standards currently in development are (other than ISO 19650 series):

  • EN ISO 12006-3 Revision (WG 6) –Organization of information about construction works – Framework for object orientated information.
  • EN ISO 21597- 1 and -2 – (WG 8) - Information container for Data Drop (ICDD) and ICDD dynamic Semantics

Joint working groups have also been set up between ISO/TC 59/SC 13 and two other ISO Technical committees:

ISO/TC 59/SC 13/JWG 12 – (set up with ISO/TC 184/SC 4) – Development of building related data standards This group works on developing IFC ISO standards under the ISO 16739 banner

ISO/TC 59/SC 13/JWG 14 – set up with ISO/TC 211 – GIS-BIM Interoperability This group is working on an ISO Technical Report called: GIS (Geospatial) / BIM interoperability

ISO/TC 10/SC 8 – Technical product documentation - Construction documentation.

Standard in development:

ISO 22014 – (WG16) Library objects for architecture, engineering and construction.

Other sessions during the day included “Developing a Dynamic Digital Twin at Building and City Levels” by Dr. Qiuchen Lu, Research Associate, University of Cambridge. Qiuchen’s presented her research work focused on developing multi-layered information platforms to integrate heterogeneous data sources, support intelligent data query, and provide smarter decision-making processes in Operations and Maintenance (O&M) management.

Finally, Sam Stacey Challenge Director – Transforming Construction at UKRI joined David and Anne in a panel session on The Future of the UK Digital Built Environment moderated by Anthony Burd, Head of Market Development, BSI.

The discussion focused on the shift beyond BIM Level 2 and a convergence with other themes of the industry 4.0 agenda including, telemetry, analytics, whole-life performance and advanced manufacturing.

CDBB is working closely with BSI and the UK BIM Alliance to provide industry with a co-ordinated approach to creating and communicating an international wrapper for UK BIM and ensuring a smooth transition in the integration of BS EN ISO 19650-1 and 2 within our suite. Collectively we will develop and champion one single set of guidance in a clear and concise manner to support industry understanding and message how to make the shift without confusion. For updates please visit www.cdbb.cam.ac.uk