London Build Expo - 16 Nov 2022, Kensington Olympia

This week I represented Airey Miller’s Information Management (IM) Team at the London Build Expo and attended several panel discussions and presentations on BIM & Digital Construction.

Paul Wilkinson from the newly rebranded UK BIM Alliance [NIMA] (the Greek word for thread) - opened the day with a keynote on IM calling for the construction industry to embrace digital data moving away from working in silos. Capturing information throughout the project life cycle to generate the “Golden Thread” of information will need to become the norm.

An interesting takeaway was that “IT” is not digital and “digital” is not IT, a point worth remembering. The keywords mentioned for the future of the industry were: automation, innovation, streamlining and integration with the main message being that we need to be open to change and cross-sector skill management is crucial in achieving this aim.

The day continued with “BIM There, Done That”… with the emphasis placed on moving away from BIM to IM as the industry approach to “BIM”. A BIM Open Mic session with Casey Rutland with thought-provoking comments from the audience was followed by a panel discussion lead by Fiona Moore. The construction industry needs to catch up in its digital transformation; it absolutely has to reconfigure itself to use information to deliver better outcomes recognising that information has value and to understand this value and use information effectively while fully adopting interoperability.

Airey Miller see there is a need to increase the industry digital maturity in order to present the right information in the right format to the right person/s at the right time. Airey Miller has invested in the ISO standards and achieved its accreditation under ISO 19650 part 2 and can assist in the digital journey to commence the production of the “Golden Thread” of information.