Industry urged to look at digital opportunities beyond BIM

UK construction can become a global leader in information management for the built environment and digital twins.

That’s the message from the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) as it launches a series of initiatives, after using a round table programme, organised with the CIOB, to gather industry feedback.

“All participants wanted the benefits of digital construction demonstrated more clearly and shared across industry, and at boardroom and executive level, there is a need for greater digital understanding and buy-in,” said Terry Stocks and Fiona Moore, information management consultants for UK Implementation at the CDBB.

“There were also regular calls for clients to ‘set the pace’ of delivery. It was felt a standardised, templated approach to data deliverables on projects would help clients engage with and benefit from BIM.”

These issues are addressed by the centre’s 2020-21 UK work plan, in partnership with the Construction Innovation Hub, which include: 

• Demonstrating the benefit of information management, including creation of a library of implementation and benefit case studies. CDBB has also partnered with the UK BIM Alliance to evaluate existing tools that assess BIM maturity.
• Public Sector ISO Transition Working Group, which will support the transition to the ISO 19650 standards for BIM in government departments.
• Home Nations Working Group, to ensure consistency of UK BIM strategy and implementation in accordance with ISO 19650, BS/PAS 1192 and BS 8536 across the UK.
• Local Authority Special Interest Group, to help support councils’ digital decision making and planning.
• Digital Framework Task Group, to guide the National Digital Twin Programme and development of an information management framework for the built environment.
• BIM Interoperability Expert Group, to understand and document current industry knowledge of BIM interoperability.
• Digital Twin Hub, a collaborative learning community where those who own and are working on digital twins can come together to learn and share.

CDBB is also working with BSI and the UK BIM Alliance to set out the UK BIM Framework, a consistent approach for implementing BIM in the UK using the framework for managing information provided by the ISO 19650 series.

The centre works with government, industry and academia to develop, support and promote use of digital technology in the built environment.

• Further details inside the CDBB supplement, Digitising Construction.