BIM for FM in Local Government – empowering Local Authorities to take control

An old problem

BIM was first introduced as part of the Government Construction Strategy to provide common digital information for all aspects of buildings owned and operated by the public sector.

Put simply, any building which is handed over to a government body, comes with information on everything in the building.  But this tends to arrive in whatever format the builder has chosen.

For some, this could be in paper format or some sort of digital information. But without any common approach, it becomes very difficult to accurately, and consistently, assess what is in a building, whether we are talking about different types of windows, doors, heating, cooling systems.

Which all makes it is impossible to have an adequate asset strategy across an estate and fundamentally, any sort of cohesive approach to carbon reduction or operating costs.

As BIM has become a mainstream tool used by most tier one main contractors and designers, many companies have developed their own standards, processes and outputs, mainly because clients and not sufficiently competent or experienced to develop the complex requirements needed.

The missing link

Whilst BIM was always designed to provide common digital information, it has been mainly used as a digital design tool by Main Contractors to demonstrate compliance or competence in the industry.

It remains poorly used as a source of digital information for building users. Which means that its potential to enable data research across the government estate, reduce capital, operational costs and reduce carbon emissions is just not being fully met.

BIM is also only one of a number of government initiatives set out in the construction playbook. A quick read however will bewilder a reader with the number of tools, initiatives, requirements and processes that have to be followed and complied with.

Many local government clients are just not experts in construction or building maintenance and need some direct guidance.

To be really effective and user friendly, any BIM tool needs to house all of the asset information that the building user needs. This should be readily available right from the digital model, as the design progresses and with input from designers, contractors, suppliers, and manufacturers. All of these requirements need to be set out at the start of the journey as a set of requirements.

The challenge we face is that for many public sector projects, there is no building operator at project inception and certainly no Facilities Manager available to set out what they need.  Which means that without any clear requirements, contractors and designers revert to issuing what they see fit, or hand over at the end of the project without any direction.

Part of the role of a framework is to act as a middleman here and help local authorities to set out some key requirements early on in the project, so that they are prepared at handover.

Here at the NACF, we have previously produced some helpful Organisational and Employers Information template documents for authorities to navigate the BIM journey.

But the key issue of what level of information is needed on the assets was still missing. We needed to support local authorities in controlling how much and what information was needed to be handed over.

In the driving seat

So, the NACF brought together a panel of experienced FM Managers from local authorities, to review what key asset information is commonly needed for effective building operation and maintenance management. They took on the task of skilfully narrowing down and prioritising hundreds of thousands of lines of information to several hundred. This was no mean feat!

This now gives us a template that any public sector body commissioning an asset can use to tell their designers and contractors what they want as an output from the complex BIM process.

An experienced client can use the template and add, remove or amend the requirements to suit their particular asset. Or a novice client could use it unamended to get the most useful information at the end.

With this tool, we put the local authorities in control, and don’t risk leaving them at the mercy of any information that designers and contractors want to give them.

We can also avoid self-proclaimed BIM ‘experts’ delivering BIM compliant projects that still mean that the asset information handed over at the end is what they want to give and not what is needed.

What comes next?

The NACF Asset Information Requirements tool is now ready to be used, and we want to share what we think is one of the most useful tools to be developed for the construction industry.

We have already established a network of users who are seeing the enormous benefits and look forward to welcoming many more in the local government community.

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