Participant Implementation Stratergies – BIM Academy: Learning and Development

We have just seen the generic tasks that each participant needs to carry out to enable BIM use in the production, sharing and storage of health and safety information.

However, each project participant has their own particular need for health and safety information, with different opportunities for addressing risks.

This means that different strategies should be used to implement the requirements, processes and deliverables that will fulfil obligations to gather, collaboratively share and use health and safety information.

So now we are going to explore in more detail the strategies that can be employed by each one of the five participants to enable BIM for health and safety.

Generally speaking, clients need to identify the required health and safety information in a document (EIR) in a proportionate way to the scope of services and complexity of the project.

This document should be shared in the CDE and should be elaborated on as early as possible in the project.

These requirements should be revisited at the beginning of the construction stage. If they do not have the in-house knowledge to so they should appoint an information manager to define the requirements.

At each major project stage (i.e. design and construction) the client should nominate the CDM Principal Designer, who will have authority to manage and coordinate the use of health and safety information and implement risk management tasks.

The client should also embed in contracts a requirement for teams to comply with the project’s design plan and approach to design risk management.

Finally, the client should place a requirement for teams to collate and record lessons learnt.

The client will need then to go through a stage where resources are used to gather health and safety information.

For example, the client should look for lessons learnt from similar projects,

gather existing health and safety information about existing assets and carry out and record an early preliminary hazard analysis to determine any major challenges, difficulties and risks affecting the project

After collating information, the client is ready to establish the information specifically required from and to other project participants at major project milestones.

This should be done for the teams participating in the design, construction, and commissioning of the asset.

The main goal of health and safety information throughout the design stages is for this information to be used by the designers so that they can identify hazards, mitigate apparent risks and, finally produce a design that is inherently safer for the end-user.

The design team will usually undertake some design risk management tasks set out by the client on top of the design risk management task that is normally part of their design process.

They should record the findings of these tasks and actions generated in the format specified by the client and agreed in the BEP.

We are going to see why agreeing on a format to record information is a very important task in more detail later.

But here is a good example of why data structure should be agreed upon between the delivery teams.

PAS 1192-6 says that if other teams need health and safety information generated in the design stage to carry out their own task and process, the design team should provide this information in the agreed format.

Another responsibility placed on design teams is for them to include representatives from the end-users, commissioning and construction as early as possible in their health and safety process so that their input on hazard identification and risk mitigation can be collected.

With regards to the inclusion of other participants in their health and safety process, design teams need to engage with a group in particular – the suppliers.

This is because the suppliers might have existing health and safety information relating to the installation, operation and maintenance of products that might need to be incorporated into the health and safety information for the project.

The way health and safety are used throughout the construction stage is slightly different from how it is used in the design stage.

In the construction, stage contractors are looking to use the information produced in the previous stages to mitigate, manage and control the risks that are inherent to the design solution.

They also want to use this information to understand how they can build the design solution in a safe manner.

However, there are also some similarities in the way contractors and design teams implement BIM for health and safety.

For example, both need to undertake some risk management tasks set out by the client on top of the risk management task that is normally part of their processes.

Both need to check with their supply chain whether health and safety information needs to be incorporated into their assessments.

Finally, both need to make health and safety information available for other project participants that need this information to carry out their own tasks.

The requirement for making information available is especially important for contractors as the construction works will usually be followed by the client and the design team who will validate and verify the constructed asset.

PAS 1192-6 requires the contractor to include the commissioning team and the facility management team in the construction team as the construction works get close to completion.

In this way, the people who will operate and maintain the building can be fully aware of the risks and mitigation tasks developed to this point on the project.

Health and safety information is used during the test and commissioning stage of the project for three main activities:

(1) mitigate, manage and control the risks inherent in the design solution that has been identified by the end of the construction stage.
(2) Plan how the test and commissioning activities can be carried out safely and
(3) establish a safe system of work.

Some requirements that are applied to the design teams and the contractor are also valid for the test and commissioning team.

For example, the commissioning team need to make the health and safety information they produce available to other teams.

The commissioning team will also need to engage and consult with the supply chain to collate health and safety information.

Lastly, like the contractor, information produced by the commissioning team will need to be shared with the client and design teams so that they can validate and verify the constructed asset.

An important aspect of how BIM for health and safety can be used at the commissioning stage is the record of unexpected risks or events during the testing of the facility.

Usually, during its activities, the commissioning team identifies the hazards and consequences that arise during a significant emergency event in testing.

BIM could be used to integrate this information into the information that has been produced previously so that the golden thread of information is not broken.

In case any defects are identified during the test and commissioning of the asset, this information could also be recorded using the information structure that has been agreed upon between the teams and integrated into the model.

For example, the defect could be identified in the model and a record of whether this defect has been accepted or any actions are requested could be created.

Remember that currently most of this information is exchanged via email in a totally unstructured way.

The last participant strategy for BIM implementation specified in PAS 1192-6 is directed to end-users.

PAS 1192-6 narrows down the implementation of the points listed in this strategy to the people responsible for the asset in use, operation and maintenance.

This description usually matches with the role of the facilities manager in an organisation.

There are two main points that end-users need to consider to enable BIM for health and safety use on their projects.

The first task is for end-users to get involved in establishing the information that they will require to be transferred and for them to establish at each key stage of the project this data should be transferred.

This means that the end-users should engage with the client team when they are establishing what health and safety information, they will need in the Exchange Information Requirements.

If any end-users join the project after the Exchange Information Requirements have already been established, they should review and evaluate the EIR against their specific needs and identify any gaps.

These gaps need then to be communicated to the information manager, to be incorporated to the information requirements for the project.

When establishing the exchange information requirements, end-users will also need to define the aspects that they want to inspect and set benchmarks for functional performance.

The reason why they need to do so is that they should also specify the information acceptance criteria that they will be used to check the information being submitted to them.