Members of the National Housing Federation and UK BIM Alliance are collaborating on a joint project to develop an exemplar set of documents and guidance to support Housing Associations implement digital asset management.
This page is the home of that project; scroll down for information, contact details and more.
What is BIM for Housing Associations?
This joint project between leading associations and industry specialists seeks to enable housing associations large and small to learn from best practice and digitise development and asset information.
Housing associations retain the majority of their built assets for the long term and are well positioned to benefit from integrating BIM processes into their development and asset management strategies. However, it is apparent that few hold sufficient information about their buildings such as accurate as-built drawings or information about installed products.
Following the Grenfell Tragedy, the Hackitt Review demonstrated that there is unanimous concern across the industry about the ineffective creation, handover and retention of vital building and fire safety information as a minimum. The Building Safety Regulator will require maintaining a Building Safety Case with a ‘digital by default’ record system. This reinforces the need for Housing Associations to adopt digital practices for holding vital information.
- BIM4HAs Toolkit – Our Toolkit provides an opportunity for associations to innovate and lead, showing the housing sector how to use Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a tool to deliver safer, better-managed buildings – due to be published soon
- BIM4HAs Forum – We have set up a community on Microsoft Teams to support best practice and provide opportunities for feedback and questions from users of the toolkit.
BIM4HAs Toolkit
This toolkit will be free to download and use.
It will include:
- Scopes of Services
- A matrix of tasks to define your strategy and then to deliver a development project.
- Written for insertion into appointments and contracts.
- Asset Information Requirements (AIRs)
- Define what is needed for safety, compliance, asset management and repairs.
- Includes an example Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) sheet for building and component data.
- Exchange Information Requirements (EIRs)
- Sets out the ‘how’.
- Includes an example Master Information Delivery Plan (MIDP)
- Organisation Information Requirements (OIRs)
- Describes the information required by an organisation for asset management systems and other functions.
- Guidance
- Outlines how to use the items in the toolkit.
- BIM for Existing Buildings
- a report by asset managers on digitising existing asset information.
How to get involved
We strongly recommend housing associations join the BIM4HAs Forum to be kept abreast of updates, learn from fellow professionals in housing and BIM and share your experiences, questions, and feedback.
Sign up to join the BIM4HAs Forum here .
Join the Toolkit Lunchtime Launch event on 12 July here
Follow BIM4HAs on LinkedIn and Twitter for updates.
Project Participation
BIM4HAs is working in partnership with the National Housing Federation and the UK BIM Alliance. BIM4HAs participate and supports:
- The MHCLG Golden Thread Initiative, a government initiative bringing together industry professionals who will collaborate to demonstrate that it is possible to provide a standardised digital Golden Thread of building safety information to the satisfaction of the Building Safety Regulator.
- The Building Regulations Advisory Committee (BRAC) Golden Thread Working Group who are assisting with rewriting the Building Regulations Approved Document B.
- The Housing Association Charitable Trust (HACT) in its development of a Housing Asset Data Dictionary, part of the UK’s first Housing Data Standard.
The project is currently funded by the following Housing Associations and supported by the National Housing Federation:
- A2Dominion
- Notting Hill Genesis
- Optivo
- Peabody
- Southern Housing Group
Sovereign Housing
Volunteer Participants in the Toolkit project came from 20 Housing Associations of various sizes, with further support from those working in the field including asset managers, data managers, client agents, contractors, architects and M&E consultants.
Project Chair:
Jack Ostrofsky (Head of Quality and Design, Southern Housing Group)
Vice Chairs:
Varun Soni (Head of BIM, Calfordseaden llp),
Shaun Kelly (Head of Technical, Quality and Compliance, Altair Ltd)
Lloyd Connors (formerly Head of Information Management, Airey Miller)
Project Manager:
Su Butcher (Director, Just Practising Ltd)
