The future of 19650 is in your hands!

Draft revisions to Parts 1 and 2 of the 19650 standards suite should be available for review and comment from 10 March. For Part 3, they should be made available for review and comment from the start of June. The review period lasts for 12 weeks.

Speaking during an online briefing staged by the BSI and nima today (24 February), Kemp emphasised her call to action: “What we need are constructive comments, which must include alternative proposals. If there are things that you’re troubled by, that you don’t like, say so, but then tell us very clearly what you would like to see instead. Please, if you like what you’re seeing, indicate that you like it, because otherwise all that we’re responding to are the negatives – and that would be unfortunate, because the negative comments may actually be a minority view.”

The commenting process will be managed by the BSI. “We anticipate that we will be dealing with thousands of comments as we did at the last round,” Kemp noted. “All those comments have to be reviewed and discussed by the working group, and we have to reach a consensus about what actually appears in the final drafts and the published standards. That consensus can be really, really tough to reach. And as convener, my job is to listen carefully and help to get to a consensus. And I should really emphasise that the consensus may disagree with what the authors [have written], and it may disagree with what quite a few of the national standards bodies would like to see.”

She came back to why reaching a consensus is necessary: “We have to work by consensus. I think it’s really important to remember that, actually, 19650 is trying to cater for a very wide stakeholder community. It needs to be understood both in different international languages and from different perspectives, from facilities managers, manufacturers, lawyers, etc.”

She issued a forceful reminder that nobody knows how the finalised standards will look. “What you will see when they’re released are proposals. So nobody should be saying ‘this is what the standard will become at the back end of this year’ – we simply don’t know that yet.”

She further emphasised that in the meantime, the 2018 editions – and certifications aligned with them – still stand.

She concluded: “This is all up to you now. The final outcome really does depend entirely on what public comments we receive and how we are then able to resolve them by consensus with our international colleagues.”

While detailing some of the changes to 19650-1, David Churcher MBE noted: “The fundamental principle of ISO 19650 is the same as it always has been – that information and data are valuable commodities that need to be managed properly in a collaborative environment. That is where we start from.

“The focus of the standard is very clearly now about the whole life of assets. We have removed the distinction between delivery phase and operational phase, and all we’re talking about now is the outcome to develop and maintain asset information models from the management process. In order to update that information model, there are still going to be interventions throughout the asset life, which, at the moment, we’re proposing to call ‘projects’.

“‘Project’ is now the information management activities that take place during each response to a trigger event. Trigger events are still there as the activities that happen to change the asset during its life, or require more information or renewed information in the information model. And that larger response to the trigger event, we’re now planning to call an ‘asset-related project’ to distinguish it from the information management activities.”

He said the revisions working group has focused on simplifying and rationalising the language. For example, he noted: “The emphasis is very much on ‘information management’ rather than ‘BIM’ as a term.”

He continued: “We’re using the phrases ‘information management’ and ‘information production’ to signpost activities that happen, resources that are created during the information management process. We’re proposing that ‘BIM execution plan’ is replaced by the term ‘information production plan’ – a plan to help the production of information. We’re hopeful that these new names are what they say on the tin.”

The revisions to Part 1 reflect the expanded ecosystem of standards since its launch. “What we wanted to do in the revised standards is to make explicit reference to these to start joining some of the dots together. Two particular standards that we are referring to in the new text are the ISO 7817-1, which is the concepts and principles for level of information need, and the information delivery manual standard, the IDM standard, which was revised only last year, ISO 29481-1,” Churcher said. “We’re proposing that there is a detailed annex at the back of 19650-1 to explain those interrelationships with the broader range of standards.”

Paul Shillcock delivered highlights of the changes to 19650-2. The main change has been known for some time, but Shillcock offered more detail: “The international steering committee voted to combine the information management process for the delivery phase of assets defined within 19650-2 with the operational phase of assets defined within 19650-3 into a single process covering the whole of the asset lifecycle. The main reason was that they wanted those involved during the operational phase of assets to be front and centre at the start of an asset-related project, not just at the end of it, and to help asset owners and maintainers to find their place within the process.”

He continued: “There’s also a significant amount of overlap between the two processes: each of the eight steps are very similar and in some cases identical. We’ve made a clear distinction within the process between ‘information management’ and ‘information production’. This was because Parts 2 and 3 use slightly different language for each of the activities and outputs.

“We’re proposing to align the activities and their outputs with either information management or information production. So, for example, we’re proposing an information management strategy at the organisation level to sit alongside the asset management strategy, along with an information management plan at the project level and an information production plan at the appointment level, and an information management team and an information production team.”

Noting this might be seen by some as controversial, Shillcock said: “We need to decide if the benefit of making standards more accessible, more inclusive and more translatable for the majority, especially the asset owners, is worth the cost of amending the current terms.”

In combining Parts 2 and 3, the number of activities for Lead Appointed Parties and Appointed Parties is largely unchanged. However, under the proposed revisions, the total number of activities for Appointing Parties falls slightly, but now represents 60% of all the activities. “This is why we need to get the asset owners on board, as they’re the ones who establish many of the outputs, both from an information management and information production perspective,” Shillcock explained. “And if we believe that language is a barrier to that, then perhaps that’s something that we should take a look at.”

Turning to parties and teams, he observed: “You will either be really pleased or really disappointed to know that the working group is not proposing any changes to the name of the parties, so we’re still going to propose keeping Appointing Parties and Appointed Parties. There are changes among teams, including the introduction of an ‘information management team’, both at the organisational and at the project level. At the organisation level, it’ll be formed of members of the asset owner’s organisation, while at the project level, it will be led by members of the asset owner’s organisation, but will also include representatives from each delivery team as and when they’re appointed.”

Churcher stated that Part 3 “is now being designated as a set of implementation guidelines to support the new part two”. He described it as potentially elastic in scope and that it may reflect comments and the consensus drive on Parts 1 and 2.

He also noted that anything that doesn’t find its way into the new guidelines can be picked up in the Information Management Initiative Framework guidance, which will itself be updated in time once the finalised versions of Parts 1 and 2 are published.

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