In Depth

PAS 1958: joining the dots

Dan Rossiter FCIAT and Emma Hooper

Sector lead, BSI; and head of information management strategy, RLB Digital

1 July 2025

Please meet the new fast-track standard, PAS 1958, that provides guidance on how existing built environment standards fit together. Dan Rossiter and Emma Hooper make the introduction.

abstract image of interlinked chains for interconnectivity and interoperability — Image: Sascha Winter | Dreamstime.com

As the UK’s national standards body, BSI curates a plethora of national, European and international standards on an array of topics. Approximately 8,000 of these standards relate to the built environment. While the committees endeavour to develop technical content free from conflict, these standards are often developed organically. As such, their scopes can inadvertently overlap, leading to friction and interoperability challenges.

One such issue was uncovered as part of BridgeAI, an InnovateUK initiative to which BSI is a partner, focused on accelerating SME activity around AI. To support its target sectors (construction, agriculture, creative and transport), a series of workshops with sector professionals took place. During the construction workshop, general feedback was that no new standards were needed.

Professionals noted that several standards already exist relating to built environment data (eg, ISO 16739-1 on IFC) and process (we have the ISO 19650 series), and that there are several standards relating to AI (ISO 42001 on AI management systems, for example). What they recommended was clarity around the relationship between the built environment data and digital standards. For example, how does:

“information requirements” (ISO 19650) relate to “exchange requirements” (ISO 29481)?

“level of information need” (ISO 7817) relate to “IDS” from buildingSMART?

“documents” (ISO 7817) and “information containers” (ISO 19650) relate to “information containers for linked document delivery” (ISO 21597)?

Interlinked standards

Due to the ad hoc way in which the information management and modelling landscape has developed, for successful implementation, many of the produced standards need to be considered alongside other standards. While some of the connections have been addressed via the standards development process, not all have.

Often, these connections are left to typical standards users on a project-by-project basis, leading to inconsistency. As such, these frictions and overlaps were seen as a key issue for an organisation, in particular a small business, developing AI solutions for the built environment, as they were unsure (or unable) to select the appropriate good practice to build their solutions on.

Upon receiving this recommendation, InnovateUK agreed to sponsor a new fast-track standard, PAS 1958. Its full name is PAS 1958 (Built environment – Data and information standards landscape – Guide) and it looks to sit above these standards to provide an interpretation layer, guidance around how they fit together. PAS 1958 doesn’t add to the list of provisions, it won’t add to training courses or make certification more difficult, and isn’t a standard an organisation should “conform to” as part of contract obligations. This standard looks to provide a consensus-based interpretation of how these standards can work together harmoniously.

It does so by establishing the tenets (principles, concepts, domains, etc) that are common between these standards and establishes a framework they can be set against.

How PAS 1958 will support

Once published, PAS 1958 will support in several ways:

For those who do information management, it creates an overall view of the key concepts relating to data and information, as well as how these standards work as a cohesive portfolio of good practice. It will help them to select the most appropriate standards to fulfil their duties and move understanding away from information management being a tick-box exercise.

For those who provide services relating to information management (eg, training and certification providers), PAS 1958 may help in structuring their content to improve usability: for example, a training course could focus on concepts instead of standards.

For nima, PAS 1958 may help restructure the content of the IMI Framework and its guidance, improving usability.

For BSI, PAS 1958 may provide invaluable feedback to allow future revisions of these standards to remove some of the frictions and conflicts identified.

Following the public announcement of the work at Digital Construction Week, PAS 1958 is currently under development, with a public comment period expected towards this autumn and publishing early 2026.

Keep an eye out for communication from the BSI or social media posts from Dan and Emma to stay up to date on PAS 1958's development.

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