Nick Nisbet, the author of the newly published ISO 19650-6 that covers information management for health and safety, explains its benefits and what’s changed from the draft version.
The new international standard for sharing health and safety information throughout the lifecycle of a building has been published. As well as helping to improve health and safety performance, ISO 19650-6 will also provide a key tool for managing the golden thread of information for higher-risk buildings that is now required by the Building Safety Act.
ISO 19650-6 – the final part of the ISO 19650 series – is for managing information over the whole lifecycle of a built asset including, but not exclusively, using BIM. It contains all the same principles and high-level requirements as the UK BIM Framework and is closely aligned with the current UK 1192 standards. In a key change from the draft version, it has also been adapted for those not using BIM.
ISO 19650-6 was authored by Nick Nisbet, a built environment information consultant and vice-chair of buildingSMART UK & Ireland, who has been working on it for two and a half years. He explains the benefit: “It’s a method for sharing the risk registers in a project, which are a requirement of the CDM Regulations, in a way that the participants in the project can contribute to.
“A standard approach to health and safety information is an important element of the golden thread, because it helps ensure that the information isn’t lost or overlooked.”
“It structures information about risks, and not only health and safety risks, but also incidents and mitigations, so that everyone in the project can access that information – principal designer, principal contractor and owner. The roles of principal designer and contractor are quite isolated, and so this should help bring them into the whole team.”
Structured information
Using structured information can result in improved health and safety performance, fewer incidents and associated impacts and provide for clearer, more assured and relevant health and safety information to the right people at the right time.
Nisbet says that setting out a standard approach to health and safety information is an “important element of the golden thread, because it helps ensure that the information isn’t lost or overlooked”. The principles and requirements of the standard can be applied equally to project delivery and buildings in use. Although the standard is applicable and extremely important to the generation of BIM information, it is also important for those that are not using it.
The draft was consulted on in the early part of 2024. Key differences between the draft and the final standard include:
- more emphasis that it is a communication standard, not a risk assessment standard (which is covered in the ISO 31000 series);
- developing the likelihood and consequence as an informative annex; and
- allowing the standard to be used in ‘non-BIM’ situations.
Nisbet says: “ISO 19650 extends the ideas in PAS 1192-6. The PAS still has some useful suggestions on techniques and technologies for identifying risk, but otherwise ISO 19650-6 supersedes it. PAS 1192-6 was developed by Peter Nicholas and myself working with the BIM4HS (BIM for health and safety) working group.”
Communicating risk information
He stresses that “the standard is about communicating the risk information, and it doesn’t attempt to tell people how they should do risk assessments”.
It will be officially launched at the BSI Built Environment Summit on Wednesday 26 March.
19650-6 has three main parts:
- how to structure health and safety information;
- the information requirements that should be added to the contracts and appointments to support its use; and
- how the process fits in with the ISO 19650 process overall.
“It fits in with the processes described in ISO 19650-2 and -3 with some additional considerations about making sure that the information is structured and accessible. So for example, in the UK, the recommendation would be to classify risks using the Uniclass RK risk table for health and safety risks in construction and in buildings in use, which was developed by HSE and myself in parallel with developing the new standard, and published in October 2023.”
The classification of risk in buildings in use is again a requirement under the Building Safety Act.
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