In the fourth in a short series of Q&As to mark the turning of the year, David Shepherd, product manager (data & construction enablers) at the Houses of Parliament Restoration & Renewal, reveals his 2023 highlights and his hopes and plans for 2024. Beware the boozy fruit cake!
BIMplus: What’s the best thing that happened in BIM and digital construction in 2023?
David Shepherd: Bar none, that was the secondary (consequential) legislation for the Building Safety Act. Apart from regulations that impose a statutory duty to establish a system for giving information, the golden thread is now statutorily defined in Part 4 of the Building (Higher Risk Building Procedures) Regulations 2023.
Those regulations provide a huge boost to the business case for deploying BIM and digital construction.
“The industry needs to be more utilitarian: greatest good to the greatest number of people.”
What are you looking forward to professionally in 2024?
I’m looking forward to leading the development of cutting-edge workflows and tools that will facilitate delivery of Parliament’s Restoration and Renewal.
What does the industry need to do more (or less of) in 2024?
In a nutshell, the industry needs to be more utilitarian: greatest good to the greatest number of people.
Do you have any sort of festive ritual?
Yes. Every year, I prep a boozy fruit cake by buying a kilo of dried fruit and steeping it in dark rum and other spirits over three weeks. The recipe will be no different from previous years.
However, as I get older, I’ve realised that the, ahem, effect on me of a single (small) slice is very different from previous years!
Recommend a book, podcast, TV series, film or album that you enjoyed in 2023.
The TV series that I enjoyed most was All The Light We Cannot See, starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie and Aria Mia Loberti. Set in France at the end of World War Two, it’s a perfect balance of suspense, romance and technology (the short-wave radio of that era has a starring role). And it provided a welcome escape from this hard-nosed world of construction that we inhabit! ☺️
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