How BIM helps manage building safety for golden thread

Introduced in the wake of 2017's Grenfell Tower Fire, the Building Safety Act 2022 introduces a comprehensive framework to prevent future disasters by emphasising transparency, collaboration, clear responsibilities and resident safety.

The core principles of the Building Safety Act, as it pertains to information management, include:

• rigorous documentation to enhance design quality
• clear accountability, assigning dedicated responsibility for decisions
• robust audit trails
• competency checks to ensure that critical decisions are made by qualified individuals
• early involvement of clients and premises managers to support long-term safety management.

While the act aims to prevent another tragedy, therefore, it also introduces challenges in terms of managing, sharing and verifying information.

The act has introduced a need for more rigorous information management: clients now demand BIM integration in the project from the outset, while checks at the regulatory gateways during construction necessitate digital trails, and dutyholders need to be assured of compliance before and after completion.

Beyond creating 3D models, BIM offers a collaborative environment that aligns with the core principles of the act, giving a framework to manage building information throughout the life cycle from design to demolition.

This holistic approach is proving to be an invaluable tool in navigating the complexities of the regulations and supporting a culture in which safety is non-negotiable.

At Bailey Partnership, I've started encouraging my teams to set SMART objectives for compliance documentation – such as making sure we can demonstrate a single source of truth at any point in the project and deliver the golden thread at completion – alongside achieving our usual targets for sustainability and quality of work, as well as meeting stakeholder deadlines.

BIM not only stores but also organises, manages, and maintains data, to make it easily accessible and reusable for specific purposes.

Using information management systems such as Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC), we manage the golden thread from design through to operation. This means we can structure time-stamped, version-controlled data into a reliable audit trail.

However, information management systems turn this complexity into coherence, providing a structured way to maintain a single source of truth.

When used correctly, they help projects to pass gateways two and three of the Building Safety Regulator (BSR)'s approval process, supporting dutyholders under the 2022 Act and enhancing safety throughout the life cycle of the building.

To comply with the act's requirements and make buildings safer, you should utilise ISO 19650 guidance to make sure your information management systems and common data environment (CDE) are set up for the following.

Change control management: systems can support version control and tracking changes, enabling real-time evaluation of impacts and streamlined documentation for review by the BSR to reduce the risk of needing costly resubmissions.

Enhanced collaboration: CDEs and clash detection workflows allow teams to maintain quality control and regulatory compliance.

Expanded accountability: clear visibility of who did what, when and why is essential for meeting duties under not only the act but also the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015. Information management can clarify roles and responsibilities and build a robust audit trail, where competent individuals and organisations – as defined by PAS 8671: 2022 and PAS 8672: 2022 – can contribute to, comment on, review and approve documentation with full transparency.

Single source of truth: BIM also enables you to centralise fire safety strategies, evacuation plans, material specifications and system designs, mitigating the risks associated with incomplete decisions and fragmented data.

Additionally, it enables collaborative design through systems such as Revit, meaning that while designers engage with the specifics, project managers can ensure the infrastructure supports integrated design strategies.

Specific data points, such as fire strategy drawings, compartmentation layouts, fire-stopping schedules and specifications for new external wall build-ups must all be integrated at the right stage of the project.

In my team, we use tools such as ACC to assign and track responsibilities in line with the RIBA Plan of Work and gateway requirements under the 2022 Act. Expectations are set during design coordination meetings and monitored using a digital responsibility matrix; I find a well-organised Google Sheet does the job beautifully.

Just as important as getting the input right is managing the way the information comes out. A well-structured CDE allows us to filter and extract exactly the right evidence, whether it's for gateway submissions, safety case reports or to respond to the regulator's inquiries.

In the space of just one month, this has enabled me to assure the principal designer that the fire strategy was accurately reflected in design outputs, as well as providing the following for the relevant stakeholders:

• evidence for the fire engineer to demonstrate compliance with fire risk appraisal of external walls (FRAEW) requirements and to help them complete the external wall system (EWS1) form
• fully coordinated, installation-level drawings for the contractor, to support accurate work on site
• easily retrievable compliance data for the client and accountable person, to inform their building safety case.

I often use BIM execution plans and a regular information requirements review to keep this spreadsheet on track, and ISO 19650 is our rulebook.

Collaboration is fostered by early engagement such as workshops with fire engineers, architects and contractors, while explicit BIM obligations are included in employer's requirements and appointments.

To prevent disputes down the line, we use clear scopes of service, defined information delivery schedules, and NEC or JCT contract clauses – as well as one under PPC2000 – that mandate and define BIM use.

Consultants and contractors are alike now responsible for data quality and timeliness, and we've started to see clients really hold us to account for provision of golden thread documentation upon completion of projects.

For instance, on a current £20m facade remediation project for a high-risk residential and commercial building that will go through the gateway process, we're collaborating with a contractor under a pre-construction services agreement and have embedded information management responsibilities directly into the contract from the outset.

This has ensured early alignment on matters that could otherwise have been overlooked: the way documents are named and versioned and where they're filed, as well as how regularly the Revit model is updated and who is responsible for this at each stage.

These agreements laid the foundation for a smoother handover and clearer accountability across disciplines than would previously have been the case.

For example, on the recent £8m remediation of a high-risk residential building, we implemented a robust quality assurance process to ensure that the golden thread wasn't just complete but practical and genuinely useful.

The process began with the original fire safety brief from the FRAEW, followed by design documentation that mapped the way its requirements would be met. We then tracked every change through a live log detailing what was altered, why, and who authorised it.

Throughout construction, the contractor issued regular quality assurance and quality control packs.

These were comprised of photographic and sketch evidence of materials removed from the external walls and reinstatement of new materials, all logged and geotagged against gridlines, which our clerk of works spot-checked on site.

Additional weekly inspections gave an extra layer of independent validation.

By the end, we had a structured, auditable record of design intent, design change and final installation that I collated and submitted to the fire engineer, forming the evidence base for the EWS1 form.

We're applying the same rigorous process across dozens of other schemes regardless of size or budget – compliance doesn't scale down just because the project does.

It's about providing legally defensible information that protects the client and the public.

By treating compliance documentation as a SMART objective from the outset, we can embed building safety into our projects not as an afterthought but as the main outcome.