The Hackitt Report covers the design, construction and maintenance of high-rise residential buildings.
Transparency of data information and an audit trail thorough the lifecycle of a building from the planning stage to occupation and maintenance is essential to provide reassurance and evidence that a building has been built safe and continues to be safe.
Local Authorities and Housing Associations are facing increasing legislation, compliance and safety challenges that are stretching the asset management capabilities of their current technology and operational procedures. Each are searching for a way to applying these principles to the existing stock of complex high-rise residential buildings as well as new builds. That is a moral obligation to those who are now living in buildings which they bought or rented in good faith assuming them to be safe and where there is a reason to doubt that. This will take time, be impeded by COVID19 restrictions and there will be a cost attached to it.
Although a cost-efficient solution to this problem is beyond the scope of the Hackitt Report review to determine how remedial work is funded. Several Local Authorities and Housing Associations have been experimenting with 3D BIM Asset surveys of their properties to help accomplish the recommendations of the Report.
Golden thread of building information
The Hackitt review has identified that a ‘golden thread’ of good quality information will enable building owners to better manage their buildings safely. As soon as detailed work commences the client needs to ensure that a digital record of the building work is established, and a Fire and Emergency File is initiated. Both of these will need to be maintained throughout design and construction and be part of the regulatory oversight process.
The Digital Record across the building lifecycle
The Hackitt review recommends that for new builds, a Building Information Modelling (BIM) approach should be phased in. BIM takes the digital techniques pioneered in other industries such as aerospace and automotive and applies them to construction. It is a process of designing, constructing or operating a building or infrastructure asset using electronic, object-orientated information.
It also forms part of the wider move towards improved transparency and integrity of information and underpins a greater focus on effective change control. Duty holders using the digital record effectively can more easily keep a log of the as-built design of the building and the products used in order to satisfy the JCA, before occupation begins.
Since April 2016, government has required BIM level 2 on centrally procured projects. This was a target established in the 2011 Government Construction Strategy. The government BIM level 2 mandate was a huge driver for digital record keeping. maturity of the UK construction industry has now grown to be able to deliver digital asset data, and increasingly work in a BIM compliant way.
The Hackitt Review and BIM Reality
During our journey, we had to revisit and completely understand what actually constitutes ‘Building Information Modelling (BIM)’. We discovered that BIM can be delivered to different levels of complexity depending on the Asset Management and compliance requirement which in turn can be categorised against building stock types. This empowers you to select which building types and indeed which individual elements of the building core that require highly detailed BIM to REVIT 3D Scans weighted against which building types or individual elements of a building can be simply 3D Photo scanned. A combination of these techniques can be consolidated within a single 3D BIM confederated Model.
For more detailed information about BIM and levels of complexity
Refer to associated Blog ‘What is Building Information Modelling (BIM)’
3D BIM Laser Scanning is fast becoming the industry norm for precision surveying in high precision and high value asset environments. As one of the first to adopt 3D BIM Laser Scanning technology, we have evolved 3D BIM Scanning techniques using a Geo-location light weight 3D Digital Wrapper App that enhances (in preference to disrupting) your existing property, asset management solutions or working procedures. This tool empowers you to embrace full 3D BIM Models for new builds and also enables you the freedom to conduct plus host new 3D BIM & Asset Surveys for existing building stock. For 5 years, BIM level 2 has been mandatory on new buildings, but the subsequent BIM Model is often delivered on a disc or online within share-point or similar environments and the asset data is embedded within Cobie. A busy Facility Manager with a large property portfolio does not have the desktop tools or experience to find or use this large data so we found that offering a 3D Digital Wrapper App – light weight, easy to use GIS, Digital viewing tool with dynamic documents provides the ultimate 3D BIM to FM enabler.
Hackitt Review & 3D BIM implementation Learnings
Adopting BIM from a Digital Transformation perspective gives Local Authorities and Housing Associations a daunting challenge with a resolution options that can be summarised as follows:
- Adapt your existing Digital Technology and processes to link to BIM
Bespoke development route - Replace your current Digital Technology and processes with new Solutions
Start again and throw away the old solutions and working procedures - Adopt a light weight ‘add on’ 3D Digital WrapperApp (Asset Connector) to host BIM
Immediately available as a proven BIM Solution from the BIM experts - Try and consolidate your Assets through a 3rd party supplier
Lose control of your assets
We opted as 3D BIM and Software development experts to adopt option 3 as it would work for multiple organisations providing the ‘golden thread’ framework as a building block to your current Digital technology and business processes. This option also causes minimal Digital Transformation disruption but most importantly is the most cost- efficient approach.
In 2020, working with several Local Authorities and Housing Associations leveraging a small percentage of precious business as usual budgets, we delivered and tested option 3.
Once the 3D Digital WrapperAPP is signed off in discovery mode, the Digital Record across the building lifecycle using BIM can subsequently be phased in across multiple sites or buildings to include design, construction, building operation and infrastructure asset levels.