Digital Construction Power Players: the people’s vote part one
29 July 2025
In Depth
BIM must work better with asset management
5 August 2025
Why should asset managers spend £100,000 surveying buildings only to find out their attributes after the buildings have just been handed over? It’s got to stop, say the chair and vice-chair of BIM In Asset Management, George Stevenson and Richard Freer.
While BIM and digital processes are becoming more embedded during design and construction, asset managers are still struggling to receive useful, machine-readable information that aligns with their day-to-day operational needs. Aiming to address this is BIM In Asset Management, a forum set up 12 months ago by BIM4Housing chair George Stevenson, founder of the consultancy ActivePlan, and vice-chair Richard Freer, founder of The Ice Fire Portfolio (which helps new businesses and talented individuals in developing countries).
BIM in Asset Management is a focused working group that emerged from the wider BIM4Housing initiative, set up to tackle the persistent disconnect between construction data and the needs of operational teams. Unlike traditional approaches that treat asset management as a secondary phase, this group places the emphasis firmly on ensuring that data generated during design and construction is structured, reliable and usable throughout the building's life, Stevenson explains. Indeed, that's why he named the group BIM In Asset Management rather 'BIM for Asset Management'.
The group takes a practical, problem-solving approach, engaging asset managers, clients, technology providers and FM experts in open dialogue to improve how digital information supports long-term maintenance, compliance and safety.
The group meets monthly, usually in a virtual roundtable format which encourages free discussion, peer learning and knowledge sharing, Freer says. There’s also a strong focus on educating asset owners and managers so they can better specify, validate and make use of digital data. The aim is to reduce the duplication of effort and cost associated with post-construction asset surveys, which are still routinely carried out on new buildings because the information handover process has been poorly handled.
“Asset management teams need to understand how to ask for the right information, and how to check it’s being provided.”
George Stevenson
Why the disconnect?
Traditionally, information handovers relied on PDFs, disjointed spreadsheets or inconsistent O&M manuals. But these are often difficult to search, analyse or update.
"We're trying to move people away from thinking of the BIM model as just a 3D model," Stevenson says. "It's an information model. Asset managers need information that’s structured, machine-readable and relevant to operations not just design intent."
There’s also a knowledge gap in what constitutes meaningful machine-readable data. Stevenson points out that while PDFs can technically be read by AI, this process is error-prone. “What’s needed is structured data - information stored in databases or spreadsheets, not just document formats. That makes it easier to audit, track and integrate with other systems.”
A recurring issue is that asset managers often don’t know how to ask for the information they truly need - or how to check they’re getting it. Stevenson says employers' requirements are frequently too vague and high-level, allowing for broad interpretation by contractors or consultants. This creates scope for critical asset data to be lost, ignored or misunderstood.
“Asset management teams need to understand how to ask for the right information, and how to check it's being provided,” Stevenson says.
Why is information in model not always used? "Information doesn’t flow through. The models often lack the granularity or relevance that asset teams need," Freer says. "Things like fire stopping, individual dampers or compliance-critical components often aren’t even modelled."
Again, that's partly due to vaguely worded employers’ requirements. “Contractors interpret them in ways that don’t deliver the right information," Stevenson says. "Asset teams often rely on BIM consultants who don’t truly understand their needs. That’s why we need to upskill the asset management side, so they can ask the right questions and check what they’re being given."
The need for machine-readable data
There's growing acceptance that data should be machine-readable and structured from the outset - not just dumped in PDFs. Years of work by advocates like Stevenson have helped shift thinking in this area. "We used to have to argue that machine readability was important. Now it’s taken as read in our discussions," Freer says.
How big's the problem?
BIM In Asset Management and BIM4Housing’s golden thread task force recently surveyed the groups’ members across the construction, asset management and regulatory space to take the pulse on the current state of digital information handover. The findings from 145 respondents reveal both optimism and deep systemic frustration.
A clear 95% of respondents said that the handover process still needs significant improvement. Only 5% described it as “working well”. This echoes Stevenson’s view that many current systems are either incomplete or inconsistent.
A key area of concern is standardisation. More than 80% said the industry needs a common data structure and shared asset-naming protocols. “If floors and spaces are named differently by each work package, it’s almost impossible for FM teams to make sense of it,” Stevenson says. That inconsistency results in duplication, data loss or worse, facilities managers simply giving up on the handover package.
Survey responses also pointed to a technology gap. While BIM is widely used during design and construction, fewer than 30% of respondents believe it delivers useful information to the people who operate buildings day-to-day.
Nearly 90% want better education and training on COBie. Despite being a standard for structured handover data, it’s often misunderstood as just another spreadsheet. As Stevenson emphasises, COBie is a structured data schema designed to enable machine-readable information exchange – crucial for asset and facilities management systems.
The survey also suggests a positive appetite for collaboration. More than 70% of participants said they would share their own digital handover experiences – both good and bad – if it helped establish best practice.
This means defining consistent data structures and linking them to real-world outcomes, such as safety case reporting. “A safety case needs narrative, but it also needs auditable evidence. If you can trace safety-related components back to verified structured data, it gives you real confidence,” Stevenson says.
Yet the legacy issue is significant. In the case of PFI buildings, even basic asset lists are often missing or incomplete (see box below). Some authorities are now re-surveying buildings at great cost, just to piece together what they’re about to inherit. "It’s not uncommon for people to spend £50,000 to £100,000 doing asset surveys of buildings that have just been handed back," Stevenson says. "And that’s because they don’t have a reliable information baseline."
Some authorities have started commissioning 360° photographic surveys of their buildings, pairing these with asset-tagging tools to build up more complete digital records. Companies such as Stevenson’s ActivePlan and OpenSpace are using AI and large language models to scan imagery, identify key assets like fire dampers or air handling units and turn them into usable, tagged records. The aim is to populate asset registers far more quickly and thoroughly than has been possible using traditional methods.
Bridging the gap
Much of the current challenge stems from how projects are procured and delivered. “Buildings are designed by system - like ventilation, fire safety or envelope - but then built in fragmented work packages,” Stevenson explains. “That means the data gets split too.”
This causes headaches down the line. “You might find that external fire doors were part of the envelope package, but unless they’re clearly named and classified, you’ll never know. We’ve done audits where the same item, say a floor, was named three different ways in three different packages.”
This lack of a common taxonomy means that facilities managers receive handover data that’s messy, inconsistent or entirely absent. In many cases, Stevenson says, they “just give up”. But that’s not an option under the new regulatory landscape.
To address this, BIM in Asset Management and BIM4Housing is working with major FM providers like Sodexo and surveying firms to develop better asset capture and naming conventions - and, critically, to encourage knowledge sharing across organisations that typically operate in silos.
ActivePlan, alongside companies like OpenSpace and Multivista, is already experimenting with AI and large language models to automatically identify and tag assets using 360° images. These technologies promise to transform how asset registers are created, potentially removing the need for laborious manual input.
Sodexo, for example, has used ActivePlan to tag assets in more than 12,000 rooms, identifying more than 130,000 individual components. It’s still a fraction of what’s needed, but it demonstrates the potential of this approach to scale.
The PFI scramble
A particularly stark example of the lack of information at handover lies in PFI schools and hospitals. In theory, these facilities should have complete asset registers as they end their 25-year leases and are handed over to the public sector.
But as these contracts near expiry, public sector clients and FM teams are grappling with a major challenge: how to recover, verify and structure building information in order to take control of their assets. Much of this information was never properly specified, delivered or updated during the life of a building. Now, with handbacks looming, authorities are scrambling to reconstruct asset records and understand the condition of the buildings they will soon be responsible for.
“There’s panic setting in,” Stevenson says, who has been working with NHS trusts, housing associations and local authorities. “We’re seeing a rush to survey buildings and understand what’s actually there, because there’s a big gap in structured asset data. In many PFI contracts, there was little requirement to provide detailed asset information that was both accurate and machine-readable.”
“We're making really good progress,” Stevenson says. “Using image recognition, we can identify what assets are in a building and turn them into auditable objects. And we’re tying in structured product information to make that even more powerful.”
However, adoption isn’t without its challenges. There are commercial sensitivities around sharing site photography, particularly when it could be used in litigation. Contractors worry that making such data widely available could expose them to risk - something Stevenson believes must be addressed through better trust and contractual frameworks.
Call to action
Stevenson and Freer are clear: the industry already has many of the tools it needs, but it must improve how it uses and shares them. Better employer requirements, standardised data and greater engagement from asset teams are essential.
Ultimately, success depends on shifting mindsets. Asset managers must be brought into the conversation earlier, better trained in digital requirements, and empowered to reject poor-quality data at handover.
“People are still spending huge sums on surveys of new buildings,” Stevenson says. “That shouldn’t be necessary. We need to ensure the right information is captured, structured and handed over properly the first time.”
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