CIAT: 0:03

Welcome to Where it's AT, the Architectural Technology podcast from CIAT that uses technology to talk Architectural Technology for technologists. The golden thread is a digital record that will be created for new high rise residential buildings, containing vital information about the building's life, including its design, construction and ongoing maintenance. To find out more, we joined a panel of Chartered Architectural Technologists on stage at Futurebuild, they discuss what the golden thread means in practice and how it should be incorporated throughout the life of the building to ensure crucial information is reliable and easily accessible.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 0:43

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the first session of today. We're talking all about the golden thread. So I'm Dan Rossiter, Sector Lead at the British Standards Institution and Vice President Technical at the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists. I got two friends with me today, Gareth and Spacy. So I guess before we start, would you mind introducing yourselves.

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 1:05

Good morning, my name is Gareth Sewell. I'm Head of BIM for Purcell Architects. I am also a Fellow Chartered Architectural Technologist.

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 1:15

Hello, good morning, everyone. My name is Spacy. I'm currently Head of Building Information at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing. I'm a Chartered Architectural Technologist, and my experience predominantly derives from architectural practice.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 1:34

Oh fab, thank you. I did speak to them both beforehand, and despite having one person primarily on design, and another primarily on asset management, we've promised there'll be no fighting during today's session - despite some of my pointed questions. We're here to talk about the golden thread and there are a number of avenues that we can take, knowing that Futurebuild is a bit more of kind of a generalist conference, it's probably better to start off talking about what it is first, before we dive into some of the deeper questions. You can find very formal definitions of it, where it talks about the golden thread being, the information that you need to understand your building and the steps needed to keep it safe. Those sorts of things you might get from people like the Department of Levelling Up and other places. But for each of you, can I ask, how would you describe the golden thread? If someone's come up and ask you about it? So, maybe Spacy, we can start with you.

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 2:20

Thank you. Yeah, that is a very good question that all of us deliberate in our own sphere of practice, but also as an overall question. To reiterate what you've already said, this is about the process. But it's also about the result of how we construct, build and occupy our buildings and make it safe for everybody who inhabits the building. The golden thread, it is predominantly about the process of how to get there. And any documentation that is produced and retained and the trace that is kept, will be ultimately the map of that process. It will be the storytelling of that process.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 2:59

Okay, thank you. How about you Gareth.

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 3:01

Okay, so from my point of view, I'm looking at having structured information, that I can use to make decisions with. I'm then looking to store that information in a common data environment, so that future decisions can be made based on that information that was used firsthand to design the building. That's where I see the golden thread being the key part of what we're trying to do.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 3:28

Now. That's great. And it's interesting, because what we've already done is had that slight divergence there because what's happened is Spacy you've talked about golden thread as a process and Gareth you focus more on golden thread information, which is the content that kind of sits in it. So we'll start with the information first. You started throwing phrases out there, like common data environment and that sort of thing, Gareth. Now, that to me, that sounds an awful lot like BIM. Now we're here talking about the golden thread. Would you mind letting us know how these two actually come together a bit, if at all?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 4:00

Well, I think the processes that we're now undertaking is information needs to be structured and associated to the graphical information that we produce. We have obviously got the level of detail, level of information, or the level of information need, but what we need to ensure is that information is actually fit for purpose. That it can provide the answers or the solutions that we're looking for when we are designing buildings. One of the key ones for me is usually when you're asked to review an alternative product. If the information isn't structured in a way that enables you to do that, you are kind of taking a bit of a risk in looking through and agreeing to change one product for another product. But having that stored somewhere on the common data environment, a document management system at least provides the information to the next person as to how you got to that decision.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 5:02

It sounds like Gareth, you're not talking about that nerdy BIM data bit, the COBie and the other bits. You're talking about normal data, you're talking about products there. So we're talking about structuring all the information on a project. We're pulling everything together and actually, it's dealing with the whole project as a data set.

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 5:18

Yeah, and when you've got that structured correctly, and when you've got it working, right, COBie is the byproduct of that, and COBie comes out working the way it was designed to work. That's the key part for me.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 5:33

And almost seamlessly, obviously, when you do COBie, you start with design and construction, and ultimately, it hands it over to asset management in that sort of way. So from your side Spacy, how do you see the BIM bit connected into the golden thread? And maybe other technologies in that way?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 5:50

Thank you. Great question. I was looking forward to that question. To be honest. Interestingly enough, one of the things I find from my experience really helps everybody around is, and all the stakeholders or duty holders, is demystifying what BIM is. And BIM is about a process, it's not so much about the sophisticated AI or future technology or current technology, or what we can do with scripting facades algorithm or whatnot. But it is more about what our process of working together. Keeping those records; delivering those records. And to add the extra layer to what Gareth was saying from our organizational perspective, if the whole building with all its assets components, specified products is constructed, is built, is delivered to an organization to actually run and manage that building - yes, COBie is the report that you would like embedded into that. But the conversation, it's always best when it starts from the endpoint, and then work our way backwards. If this is how we operate the building, what is the information that we require? And how most importantly, do we require that information to be able to bring it all together at the end of that cycle? Interestingly enough BIM as a process can help a lot with certain workflows. If we challenge our perspectives by having these conversations as early as - probably the end of RIBA Stage 3 of design - we will then reshape our design responsibility matrix to be mapped against the level of development and the level of information required as early on. We could then go back and identify skill gaps between disciplines by going through that rigorous process, we can fit that into our master information delivery plans, so that each of the stakeholders at the end of the cycle - when upon handover of the building documentation - can have a review, whether they meet their regulatory requirements or compliance and operational needs.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 7:59

That's really good, and there's a number of things we can unpack out of that. The first was, I think you mentioned a few times the information requirements bit, asking for information that you need, and there are a few different purposes you floated there. So just before we finish, you talked about regulatory requirements. So what do I need in order to satisfy the regulations that I as a dutyholder need to perform for. There's the kind of operational requirements or as an asset manager, you know what information I need to run and operate this building, piece of infrastructure, or whatever. And there's even those kind of organizational kind of requirements in the sense of as a business, we might want to show off that we are near zero carbon, or other positive aspirational stuff that escapes me just now, and what data you might need to prove and demonstrate that. A lot of this doesn't sound very new, because we've had that idea of information requirements now for least 10-15 years at that point, and it sounds like all we're saying is if you do information requirements for planning, for your gateway processes, information requirements for the fire engineers and consultants from that side of it, which you probably should do anyway, it doesn't sound that different. And to be honest, you look at things like Regulation 38, and stuff, you've already had a requirement to deliver fire safety information to someone. So how much of this is stuff we already should have been doing? And how much of it is actually new?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 9:20

Yeah, a lot of it not surprisingly, a lot of it is things that we have already been doing on the design and delivery side of the story. I think where we can do a little bit better is have this conversation with our clients, to inform them and sort of share the knowledge of these processes and procedures. How does that help us during construction? How does that help us in delivering the information required for procurement? For value engineering of systems? What other things are to be taken into consideration to ask these questions as early on, because that will ultimately help us structure our delivery and provide better service. But above all else, what you're going thing to find at the end of this process is that that's going to help us on the design side as well to optimize and provide efficiency, in our own work and delivery. Part of the Regulation 37 and 38 if you are referring to the building safety cases as part of the new requirement, there is a lot to unpack there but if you think about if we go back to the design responsibility matrix, and we map all the stakeholders responsibility, lead appointed parties, and then appointed parties under these leader point and parties, and then we start mapping the coordination during construction process. Take for instance, the void provisioning coordination for fire stopping this is part of the reports that the building safety managers must collect at handover, for building, so that that will form ultimately a part of the building safety cases. And back to reference all of that to the golden thread. What happens is, that's how the golden thread continues as a process because we know what we've designed, how we've coordinated it. We would be able to identify the ultimate skill gaps that will affect the health and safety of that building during that process, and then have a bit more confidence that we delivered safe product at the end, the end of it

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 11:16

Anything that you want to add Gareth in terms of what has already been done, what's new?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 11:21

No, I think what Spacy has said there is quite clear and quite concise. I think one of the things that I've seen becoming a bit more apparent is the ability to share that information with people like the fire engineers, or even fire officers, where they are now becoming more informed about the buildings that are being built, in their areas, potentially what that will mean to them in terms of fire, if there is one. How they get into the building. How they work around the building. And the more data that we have, the more informed we become as individuals, and therefore educating clients and contractors with that data.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 12:03

And then on the kind of design construction side, you look at the regulations, you look at what's been talked about, there are a number of prescribed documents in there. I'm not going to go through the whole list, mostly because I don't remember the whole list. But some of them I've scribbled in my notes beforehand that helped me out for today, include things like the Safety Case Report, that Spacy has already mentioned. Things like the Competence Declaration, the Construction Control Plan, those sorts of documents. Now, are these brand new are these stuff that you've already had to do anyway?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 12:33

They're new names that are dressing over things that we should have been doing as an industry from day one. It's one of those things that again, an incident has highlighted the need for us to make it clearer to the industry, what is required to deliver quality buildings and quality information.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 12:57

Would you then say that if you as a chartered professional, who relies on a robust Code of Practice, like an Architectural Technologist perhaps, they might have already been doing this sort of thing, but maybe not using the titles for these documents?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 13:14

Yes, we should be, it's part of our training, it's part of what we bring to the industry. The industry has to rely on competent professionals but I think the biggest thing you've got to ask yourself is, how do you measure competency? And I think that's one thing that this golden thread is also raising questions on, and that's a whole other debate.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 13:39

And one we probably won't have time for today. Spacy, anything extra you can bring in on this will be great. You know, some other prescribed documents, maybe more on that asset management side. You've got things like the information handover statement, while you're in practice. Did you ever see one of those get written? And are we going to see more of them now?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 13:56

I hope that we do. Frankly, no, I haven't seen any just yet, it's quite a recent transition for me. But I'm working closely with the leadership of the asset management and all the stakeholders that it takes an enormous, enormous amount of effort to actually deliver a building or a site. I didn't believe it before. But it takes a lot more than that to actually operate the building. So I will go back to the one, that before we start anything, if we can all sit together, have that conversation with our clients, inform them about these processes. Teach them share that knowledge. Because they will have the best input into that workflow. At the end of the day, we we work to deliver that building to be operated and to be operated safely for everybody. So that's a common goal that we all have. So it doesn't really end at handover. That's what I'm going to say.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 14:50

This might be a record for me, but I've gone a whole 17 minutes without talking about Standards. But what you've done there is started talking about the processes, the good practice, the need for operability, and I can't help but think of Standards such as BS 8536, which is designed for operability. So I guess the question is, where do Standards come in to some of this? Because we've talked about BIM a lot, so that's obviously where things like the ISO 19650 series comes into it. We've got Standards like BS 8644-1 2022, which is the digital management to fire safety information and other things as well. So how can, how can Standards help? And how are they, dare I say it, maybe even hurting or, or mis-communicating, something. If you feel like that we can sow a bit of dissent, if you want. You're welcome to be honest, in front of everyone, I won't take it personally.

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 15:36

Well, obviously, Standards are there as a guidance document to inform you, how you might achieve doing something. They are a way of working, but they're not necessarily the definitive way of working. But I think, overall, we need to challenge the Standards when we feel that they're not achieving what we need to achieve. Dan's mentioned 19 650, I am very vocal on it, as Dan knows, we both sit on the B555 Committee, which deals with all of this. My concern with that one is, it's a Standard that's been put out, but it's a standard that small businesses will have to pay a lot of money to get and to use. And so I'm, I'm kind of this approach that somehow, in this industry, we got to make certain people have access to Standards, so that they can learn. Bit like the building regs are available for people to review and understand. We need to do the same that way. Standards are there to help us, but they're not necessarily always right. And that's where we as competent professionals, need to stand up and challenge and improve them, and not just accept them.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 16:55

Very good point, and that's why we have the opportunity to do public commenting when drafts come out. And we revise them and edit them because we acknowledge that no-one's perfect, and actually the better we can get it, and the more we can learn from industry, and more feedback we can receive, the better. Spacy from your point of view do Standards help at all, or are they just expensive pieces of paper that sit on the shelf at the back of the office somewhere?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 17:17

I do love Standards, I must admit, because at their core, they're actually ultimately a guidance and a guidance that took a lot of deliberation. But deliberation happened across the span of several years, 10+ years at best, it had input from so many people. And the fact that we still keep challenging those Standards only tells me that they work. Standards are really good, they really do set the scene, they do really ask the right questions. You can kind of really rely on following a Standard to an extent where exactly as Gareth mentioned, you have to then tailor those principles from the Standard to your own operation, to your own personal needs, to the project personal needs, to your organizational operation methodology personal needs, and then find the best process to align to those Standards. Standards do prescribe quite a lot, which is not bad at all, in fact, what you're going to find on your journey, is quite often the fact that there are certain levels of requirements which must be prescribed. But again, Standards will provide you a guidance and a case study, to extract the principles from but ultimately, is the operational side of things about waste most.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 18:37

No, that's great, all very good points, which I'll defend off-mic afterwards. But ultimately, I think it helps with consistency. And we're dealing with an awful lot of different actors or stakeholders, dutyholders, not just on the project, but you're we're doing we're talking wider into government and other places as well. And actually having that consistency between people is pretty good. And I think that's where some of it can help. And one thing I will mention is, you may not have seen it yet. But there's work happening in places like the Building Safety Alliance, for example, and they're looking at how they can align some of the Uniclass Codes to some of the key deliverables from The Building Safety Act because it's complicated, there's a lot of pieces of secondary legislation. There's a lot to go through and it's very complicated. So any form of guidance, it be it in BSI technical standards, industry standards and guidance, like from somewhere like the Building Safety Alliance. Ultimately, it's going to help people understand it, gain that consistency. So actually, we can cross communicate and exchange together.

CIAT: 19:36

You're listening to Where it's AT - the Architectural Technology podcast from CIAT.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 19:43

Interestingly, you will hear about all sorts of different things today. I'm willing to bet within 3 stands distance from here, there'll be someone talking about AI(artificial intelligence). So I think it'd be quite interesting to see where some of that fits in. Selfishly, BSI - we're part of the BridgeAI program - and I've seen some interesting use cases where people are actually talking about, how they use AI to help with the Building Safety Act and do some of these things. So as fellow technologists, where do you think AI and other technologies actually fit into this? Let's throw a couple of buzzwords out, what about big data? Or what about all these sorts of things? What's useful, and maybe what's the things people should be afraid of doing with it, and not just jumping in headfirst? Gareth.

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 20:27

Okay, so from my point of view, I think the biggest thing you've got to ask for is, what are you expecting AI to achieve? So start with the end in mind and work back to figure out how AI is going to assist you with that. I think the other thing you've got to do is always run a sense check on what AI is producing for you. It may be very clever, it may be very intelligent in what it's producing. But is it necessarily what you really need? There'll be a big push this year from Autodesk about their AI capabilities. There's a few others that are coming along, ChatGPT 4, I think is out now. And there's other ones that will be plugging into design software that we use. But again, it's only as good as the question you ask it. So again, I think we've got to recognize the limitations and the capabilities, and ensure that we don't just rely on the answers, it pushes out.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 21:27

Yeah, that's great, anything you wanna add Spacy?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 21:30

Yeah, I agree with everything Gareth said, I will add a little bit small context, in a sense that it is just about the process as well. So if we refer to AI as a machine learning model, ultimately it is us who teaches that model to do what we asked it to do. How are we going to teach a process if we don't have a process first. So we have to stress test and play devil's advocate with our own processes. In order to feed that into a machine learning model in order to produce an AI that is actually will be able to deliver what we ask of it to deliver. And then we have to have the lessons that we always do, as professionals regardless of the modern age of technology or not. We always regularly review our processes and procedures, we improve them, we change them, we align them and adjust them to what was previously working, what is not working anymore, aligned to new requirements, etc. And that can span a really big scope of topics. If you take for document control for instance, there is out there a lot of products in the market but this is not about the products is just an example. For instance, if we use Clarity Smart Bots to manage our common data environments, such as Autodesk Construction Cloud, then we can program to follow our process - so it gets automated and minimizes human error in document controls - such as tracing, change management, into revision of schedules of products, etc. But it is only going to be as good as the process we build into it. So we first, really have to take a step back and articulate what that process will be, define that process for us and then fit it into the algorithm

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 23:14

Alright, so here's a hypothetical for you. So, I'm working on a HRB (higher risk building) I don't have time to go through all my documents, to try to answer some of these requirements. Why can't I just chuck it all into a private ChatGPT, a large language model, and then ask the question "What do I need to satisfy my duties as a duty holder?" and let it spit stuff out? And then submit that as part of my gateway approval? Why can't I just put it in and let AI do it for me?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 23:44

You can bu-

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 23:46

good alright, job done thank y'all.

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 23:47

But when it goes wrong, who's responsible? You can't sue AI? Can you?

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 23:55

Well, I think that's for the courts to decide if you tried-

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 23:57

Yeah, exactly. So I think as a competent, trained professional, you have a duty of care, to ensure that you have validated that information. And if you blindly just submit it, then you are opening yourself up to all sorts of problems later down the line.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 24:18

No, it's true. And, there's a fun thing that you can try at home with some of it, if you want. First is never put company information in the public one because that is captured, it uses it so people can pinch it. But the second one is, if you put a transcript from a meeting into ChatGPT and ask it to make minutes, it will be very good but sometimes it'll add stuff that didn't happen in the meeting, the term for it is hallucinating; where it will actually add fake stuff it sees in other people's minutes and thinks you know what, normally this gets added to minutes, I'll add this to minutes. So even if you put in data, it has habit of making stuff up. So as Gareth is saying there, you need to be able to check it, and I think I remember someone saying, think of AI more as a draftsperson not as a designer. In the sense that it might help build some of the content, but you need our competent professional to check it over afterwards. But certainly it can maybe help build some of these documents as long as someone checks it in the end. And then what about the role of software in some of this? Now, we'll be able to go around the stands today, and I'm sure we'll be able to find, you know, people like Viewpoint, maybe Glider, or other electronic document management systems, there might be turnkey golden thread solution software out there. Should someone go over there just buy that, and let them take over that responsibility for you? I'm sure they'd offer and say, you know, we'll, we'll source it for you, we'll help you juggle all of the requirements. Is that a good idea Spacy?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 25:42

No. There's great technology out there, there's great thought that went behind that technology out there. And we have to have certain level of confidence in the people who present and develop this software, that they have put a lot of work behind the scenes. They approached each of the dutyholders or stakeholders on the process, and they've collected insights to develop their product, to put it out there on the market. But what we cannot expect from these people is to provide out of the box solution for exactly what we need. The reason they can't do that is because they're not part of us, they're not part of our organization, they're not part of our project, they don't know how this operates. They wouldn't be able to advise us on the best practice, we probably - by speaking to a variety of products delivery people out there - we will be able to gauge that there are some similarities in the approach. But there will also will be vast differences, because each of them will be focused in a specific sector of, of the market. So one type of tool or software might be really, really good for mechanical engineers, but that would not serve anywhere near as good for an architectural firm. And none of this will be suitable for Asset Management and Building Operations, where you have to satisfy a lot of regulatory requirements, amongst other business dealings. So the ultimate case, I will go back to the basics really, define the process for you first, and then find a solution that's going to execute your process and work with product developers out there, because they're really keen to learn and exploit that opportunity to make the product more fit for the purpose.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 27:28

I can't do this without asking at least one cheeky question of someone. So Gareth, given that you've spoken at Autodesk University, and done these sorts of things. Are Autodesk a goodie, or a baddie in this situation?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 27:41

That's a difficult one to answer.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 27:42

That's why I asked ha, ha-

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 27:45

Ha. Thank you, I would say it's a little bit of both at times. Sometimes they are producing products that we we need, that help us, but then they are also producing products that can hinder us. I think the key thing on on it all, is ensuring you engage. You provide feedback. You try and give these developers as much information as you can, to improve the products. That's the key part of it. I mean, it's a it's a difficult one, you know, we've seen Revit over what's 20, maybe 20 years that Autodesk have been owning it for. We're still struggling to get certain aspects of it working correctly. And I'm sure pretty much everyone here will put their hand up and say, staircases, and railings never work. We keep arguing it. They add features that we necessarily don't want and we keep saying please fix the ones we do want.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 28:41

That way you need to say where you need staircases, now anyway, so-

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 28:43

Exactly. Yeah and you got to make certain they work correctly in the software.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 28:48

No exactly right. So we've got about 10 minutes left of the session. So what I'm going to do is, I'm going to slowly cue up the fact that we'll do some Q&A in a sec. So if anyone's got any golden thread based questions they want to ask, you have the option to think of it now while I quickly ask these two, where do we think someone should go if they're starting their journey on this, where is a good place for them to go? What's step one in their journey of becoming a black belt in golden thread?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 29:13

Good Housekeeping. Identify the process for the business first for the organization requirements first. Make sure it's robust tested, agreed upon different departments, and operate and works for the organization. And then take it from there. The next steps will just feed itself, the story will tell itself as part of the process. Ultimately decide what you want out of it, and work it backwards. And that should help start this this journey.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 29:47

That was great. I had this great idea of if I went onto your computer, all I'd see is swim lane diagrams for everything. Very process driven and I like it. How about yourself Gareth?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 29:56

Very similar to what Spacy said there. It's understanding what you need to produce, to then understand the processes you will need to put in place to get to that point. So we're back to that start with the end in mind, work your way back, and define your processes around that.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 30:16

Great. And then the only other one I'd add, is to look out for industry best practice, You know, it's not necessarily going to come from British Standards. But as I mentioned, work from the Building Safety Alliance is working on guidance around the golden thread, and how it ties into stuff. We know that the Department of Levelling Up is working on its own guidance for the golden thread as well, to try and cut through some of the, the regulatory rigor that's gone into it. So by keeping an eye out for looking at what is authoritative guidance from government, from industry groups, from British Standards, from your own professional institutes, it can actually help do the hard work and the hard lifting for you, to help maybe make you spend more time doing your job, and less time thinking about something someone else has already thought about. And so what we'll do is we'll leave that there to see if anyone's got any questions. Ah! a hand straight up.

Audience Member (First Question): 31:05

Thank you. Really helpful. All of that. I'm Ruben Scotford. has worked for myself as a consultant in this and various other areas. I just wanted to check I've understood you correctly, which is there's always a question of who's going to do certain things. And if you don't define who does what, it generally doesn't get done, because nobody feels like it's their job, and they get paid for it. So I think I've heard from you that a good type of person to do this work or coordinate it, structure it and make it happen is an Architectural Technologist is that the general understanding of people on projects that's that's where it sits? Or do they think it sits somewhere else? Or do people just dream and imagine it sits somewhere, when in reality, it doesn't actually sit anywhere.

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 31:48

I'm happy to try and put some information on that. The best one I refer to is the SEP - which is basically everyone running around going it's someone else's problem. It doesn't necessarily have to be an Architectural Technologist, because we'll have all the architects clamoring and trying to beat us up if we say we're the only ones who can do it. But what you need to define is that responsibility matrix. You need to make certain everyone understands who is going to be responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. And then make certain that the people who are undertaking certain aspects of this, have the necessary competency and qualifications to do it, and if that happens to be an Architectural Technologist it just means we're doing our job correctly, then. And you know, we're slightly better than architects but can't say that really.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 32:38

Is anything you wanted to add to that Spacy? Or-

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 32:40

No I completely agree with that. The end of the day is all about conversation and coordination, and strict definitions of who takes on to what role, at what stage are, and this approach of who is accountable, who's consulted, who has provided that information?

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 32:57

Yeah, so obviously, when you look at things like the competency standards that have come such as BS 8670, then the other bits and pieces off of that, you've got key duties that have been identified, like the lead designer, the lead constructor, what was the build and safety manager - still is in some devolved countries - but England doesn't want it anymore. But the idea is, in theory, those dutyholders have duties they need to follow. And I think what we're talking about is Architectural Technologists are primed to be the lead designer on projects. And actually we are releasing a Register showing which Architectural Technologists are competent on our own Register, as part of trying to demonstrate and meet some of the requirements that have come out from Dame Judith and other spaces, to show that. But at the same time, other Institute's are doing the same sort of thing. And actually, it depends on your exact project, who the right person is going to be there to lead that work. It just means that we are on hand, as well as other Institutes, to try and be that competent, valued professional to help support that work. And so hopefully, that answers that question. I did see two other hands start to go up. I think this one was first over here.

Audience Member (Second Question): 34:00

Yes, going back to the golden thread, which I seem to remember Dame Judith Hackitt introduced as "if you have a building, however old, there's a record of what's changed to it and what's gone on." As a Chartered Building Surveyor, I mainly look at residential jobs, and even if I'm doing a valuation, I'd love to know exactly when the building was built. I mean, I'm guessing by the thickness of walls, and what's been done, and I'm talking mainly about fairly small properties, but it could be a block of flats, who is going to be the keeper of this golden thread? And how accessible would it be to - I don't think I'm really a member of the general public when I've been asked to look at a property, say a pre purchasing - to the professions that need to know how is that going to be legislated? Because there's Data Protection that that's my problem. How do I as a genuine interested party acting for my client, get hold of this information? And then again, how accurate can I believe it to be? You know, we're talking about false information. That's the last thing I want. I want accurate information, I'd rather have no information than inaccurate information. But yes, how can that be solved? Because I think that's a legislative in government problem. I think.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 35:09

There's a lot of good things in there. And this is probably the last question due to the amount we'll unpack out of that. Very, very quick anecdote is that when I worked for a Local Authority, we had that exact problem where we had had CAD captures of all our buildings, the accuracy of the dimensions plus minus a meter. And yeah, we'd hand those over and say "Here you go, here's a floor plan" And then you get asked “Well can I trust it?” No. Immediately, it goes in the bin, they hire someone and they survey it. So you're right. If it isn't trusted, and someone isn't willing to be accountable for that information, it's going to be useless. And one of the key principles in the golden thread and the golden thread itself, is that idea of that it's trustworthy, and that there's a level of accuracy, and it's kept up to date. Which means ultimately, there are there's responsibility of the - I believe this right and these two will correct me - it's the owner of that building, asset, piece of infrastructure, who is responsible for the maintenance of that information going forward. To ensure that it is accurate and up to date in that sort of way? So I think it's about having a mechanism to do so. And then from a access point of view, their similar conversations happening with a high rise building sense that you don't give residents access to all the information because some of it they they're not gonna be competent to understand. And actually, it's working out which bits are useful for them to see and use. Which bits are right for the other people to use in that sort of sense. So it's about having those different levels? So, as someone who's going in to look at and inspect the building, there's some information that they could make available without making all of it available, which goes into access control. And I think, on that point, Gareth, we are we've done a lot with things like common data environments, the way that you can tag things, structure them, that you can give access to some information, but not all of this. So this has started to look a bit like a digital kind of premises Information box in a way, isn't it?

Gareth Sewell FCIAT: 36:54

Yeah, very much so. I was gonna say a common data environment is one of the main areas where you would store all this information. You'll have kind of a client side, which is that the information that only the client building owner needs to see and understand. And then possibly, you'll have that more public side, for the owner occupiers, especially with a high rise building. There are other solutions coming onto the market, there's things called a Building Passport, these are all being held and developed by actual approved inspectors, and therefore the information is being retained in a secure environment, and therefore, is accessible to the likes of professionals like us, as we need it. What's what's happening with the high rise buildings is going to eventually filter down to, you know, individual homes. And it will be a data protection issue. But I think some of the solutions that are being offered today are going to help resolve that issue further down the line.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 37:54

Spacy, I guess on that question, really. How do you see the keeping things up to date? From a from an asset management point of view? How do you ensure that this information is actually kept up to date so that if an inspector shows up and actually wants a look at the building, you can trust, and you're happy to be accountable for that information?

Spacy Bondarenko FCIAT: 38:11

Again, common data environment and the structure, the way the way these separates the way the permission levels are. The insurance behind the setup, that it can do exactly what you want it to do at the times you want it to do. Adding to the golden thread of that, you want to have your activity log generated at prescribed intervals, to have legal recourse for actions taken. So that you will have your assurance that the information wasn't only received but it was looked at by the parties you are expected them to do the actions with that information. That all revisions are tracked and captured independent of human activity, whether I did forget to record revision to the system itself is going to record it automatically upon authorized change. Sophisticated enough as a common data environment that has really iterative QA process and procedures. And the future - personally from my perspective - will be the digital twins.

Dan Rossiter FCIAT: 39:08

And on that bombshell and I see the time signallor at the back, we're going to have to call it there. So I just want to say, a big thank you to Spacy and Gareth for joining us on the panel. Thank you for your questions. And I hope you have a lovely rest of the day here in futurebuild (March 2024). I'm sure there are lots of great things to see. We'll hang about afterwards, if you've got any questions if you were too shy to put your hand up. But from me, Dan Rossiter and from Gareth and Spacy, thank you very much enjoy the conference.

CIAT: 39:35

Our thanks to Dan, Gareth and Spacy, and all our friends at futurebuild for making this episode possible. Don't forget to subscribe and share and until the next time. The contents and views expressed by individuals in the Where it's AT podcasts are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the companies they work for or of the Host. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as advice.