Life beyond BIM Level 2

Mark Bew MBE
28 October 2015

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The government's new October 2016 data validation stretch target will ensure all departments build on the success of BIM level 2, explains Mark Bew.

Whether you describe it as a mandate or simply a direction of travel, the intention over the last few years has been to embed BIM and digital technology into central government spend so as to lever the market towards behaviour change. 

Success is helping the market to do things in consistent ways and using the digital economy to transact. BIM Level 2 is a stepping stone along the path. 

By helping the client to pull effectively through common data procurement methods – and we have put a number of standards in place to help enable that – then the supply chain would get better at pushing against that common consistent procurement ask. 

"Because we have met the April date we now want to continue to drive the quality of data up. It is all very well pushing data at each other but if that data is rubbish then what is the point?"

And that is what we are starting to see, the supply base has worked with software vendors and we now see clients receiving data, using data servers and enabling services, insights and efficiencies that were impossible even a few years ago.

The reality is that this mandate has got people talking about BIM and data. We are starting to reduce Capex but more important we are now having a conversation around operational costs. 

We didn’t set out on this journey to not succeed. And I am pleased to say that all “in-scope” public sector clients are now green on the HMG register and set to meet their BIM Level 2 requirement by the April 2016 target. 

And because we have met the April date we now want to continue to drive the quality of data up. It is all very well pushing data at each other but if that data is rubbish then what is the point?

So the next step must be a data validation strategy and our new stretch target will ensure all departments have that capability by October 2016.  It isn’t really new - we already have plans for validation and checking of data and in the recent release of the BIM Toolkit there is a mass of tools to help.

"By embracing the BIM level 2 April 2016 mandate the UK has taken a leap forward globally in digital construction and data enabled infrastructure."

What is new is the realisation just how important this issue is for the delivery of efficiencies, trust and collaborative behaviours.

The fact is that these tools are now available so we need to develop the techniques and pass them down into the supply chain. If we don’t start to validate then we don’t get trust into our data. 

By embracing the BIM level 2 April 2016 mandate the UK has taken a leap forward globally in digital construction and data enabled infrastructure. This new stretch target will keep us driving forward, ahead of every nation facing the same challenges of increasing demand on public infrastructure services and reducing budgets.

Mark Bew is the UK government BIM Task Group chair