Services
→ BIM Consultancy
→
Strategic Information Management
Most organisations lose track of their project data within a year of handover. Models get archived, folders get buried, and the information that cost millions to produce becomes something nobody can quite find again. Strategic information management is how we stop that happening. We build the structure and the standards your information needs to outlive the project that created it, with the oversight to keep both in place. Every asset in your portfolio keeps paying you back long after the team has moved on.
Speak to our strategic information management team
What sets us apart in strategic information management
Some organisations want us to run their Information Management function directly, from Common Data Environment setup through to daily protocol enforcement. Others want their own people running it, with us building that capability behind them through structured training on live projects. Either way, the organisation ends up owning its information properly, with the standards in place to prove it.
We hold BRE certification to BS EN ISO 19650-2:2018, among the first UK consultancies to achieve UKAS-accredited status against the standard. In practice, it means our Organisational, Asset and Exchange Information Requirements are built the way the standard intends. Each one answers to the next, so a facilities manager can find what they need years after handover without a call back to the original design team.
Organisational information requirements
The one question every project should already be able to answer
Before we touch a single model, we ask what your organisation actually needs to know, and when, to make good decisions about its assets. That’s your Organisational Information Requirements, or OIR, and it’s the reference point every other document has to point back to, including project briefs and model standards. We’ve applied this discipline across nuclear, rail and aerospace sites, where an OIR nobody thought through properly tends to show up years later as data nobody can use. Strategic information management starts with getting that question right, before any modelling work begins.
Common Data Environment
A shared space your teams will actually trust
A Common Data Environment nobody trusts becomes one nobody uses, so we build ours around how your teams actually work. That includes the information protocols and production methods that keep a fire door schedule consistent no matter who last touched it. It’s the groundwork behind every BS EN ISO 19650 compliant handover we deliver, and it’s usually the part clients notice least, right up until the day they need it.
Strategic information management work in practice
BIM implementation is as much about people as it is about software. A licence and a template will get a model started, but they won’t get it trusted. We build our implementation programmes around BS EN ISO 19650, starting with the right Exchange Information Requirements and a BIM Execution Plan your teams can follow. Training comes next, so the approach holds once the project moves at pace.
Most BIM support services problems trace back to the same cause. A model looks complete on screen but was never checked against what the project actually needed. We treat the information with the same care as the geometry, so the two stay in step. Our people handle modelling and coordination alongside information management, and our training comes from real projects rather than generic material. BIM implementation carries through the whole project rather than stopping at an early milestone.
Pedestrian flow modelling is often taken to be about the pictures: a rendered crowd moving through a rendered concourse. The real value sits earlier than that, in the decisions it changes before a design is fixed. We use agent-based simulation to test how people will move through a space before it exists, so problems get caught on screen rather than in a finished building. It’s part of our BIM consultancy work, alongside the structural and services modelling that runs through a project’s design and delivery.
Construction programmes generate a large amount of information across their lifespan: models, drawings, specifications, change records. Most delays and disputes on site trace back to a simple failure. The information arrived late, in the wrong format, or not at all. Project information management keeps that information accurate and accessible, so the right version reaches the right person at the right point in the build, and stays trustworthy long after the scaffolding comes down.
Understanding strategic information management
A few of the questions we’re asked most by clients weighing up their own approach to organisational information.
Strategic information management is the organisational approach to controlling data across every project an organisation runs, rather than one project at a time. It sets the standards, governance and Common Data Environment that let information outlive individual projects and keep delivering value across a whole asset portfolio.
OIR, AIR and EIR are the three information requirement documents defined by BS EN ISO 19650. OIR sets what an organisation needs to know overall. AIR defines what operational teams need after handover. EIR specifies exactly what gets delivered, in what format, at each project stage.
BS EN ISO 19650 is not a legal requirement for private projects, though it’s mandated on centrally funded UK public sector work under the Information Management Mandate. Many private clients adopt it anyway, since it reduces the risk of losing asset data at handover or during a system change.
A Common Data Environment is the single shared space where project information gets produced, checked and approved before release. It’s a core requirement of BS EN ISO 19650, and its purpose is to stop teams working from outdated or conflicting versions of the same data.
Both approaches are valid, and the right one depends on how much this needs to become permanent organisational capability. Some organisations want a consultancy running the function directly. Others want their own team trained to run it, with outside support building that capability behind them.
