Clients and asset owners must be made more aware of the value of information management and reminded that they can do more than just issue Exchange Information Requirements (EIR) and BIM Execution Plans (BEP).
That’s two of the key recommendations for nima following a workshop focused on making the UK BIM Framework work for clients and asset owners. David Churcher MBE of Hitherwood Consulting and Professor Sarah Davidson of the University of Nottingham facilitated the workshop at Digital Construction Week earlier this summer. It was attended by a mix of clients and asset owners, contractors and consultants.
The workshop addressed three questions:
- What do clients/asset owners need to do for themselves and why?
- What do they need to do for their supply chain and why?
- What do they need their supply chain to do for them and why?
The primary insight was that there is a lack of understanding among clients about the power of the information management process to enable them to get what they need. There may also be a lack of understanding among some members of the supply chain about the implications of not implementing the information management process themselves.
Next six steps for nima
Ultimately, the workshop resulted in six recommendations for nima to explore:
- Raise awareness among clients and asset owners about how the information management process delivers value to their projects and asset management activities.
- Publicise the importance of all the information management resources that are specified in the ISO 19650 standards, beyond the EIR and BEP.
- Strengthen its guidance around clients and asset owners communicating their requirements clearly, and providing leadership to their project or asset supply chains.
- Develop its guidance about the information sharing/authorisation/acceptance and rejection process to improve understanding and adoption of this process for the benefit of project and asset teams.
- How to raise awareness among the supply chain about the potential use of the information that they generate and how to integrate this into information delivery plans.
- Promote the availability and application of the information protocol templates to assist project and asset teams to appropriately capture information management obligations.
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There have been lots of posts on BIM+ from various people that have demonstrated the facts from this group many years ago. Lots of opinions and facts raised that many clients use template EIRs and BEPs just being tick boxes. How come its taken so long to recognise? My organisation hires an army of BIM managers to produce outputs nobody actually uses all because this issue has been ignored for so long. I fear its to late to solve.
Existential crisis
A blind client just does ot see the information. And if they do see it they must be able to assimilate it. Many can’t.