Round Table Review: Managing the Golden Thread of Information to Ensure Long-Term Safety 13


DEBATING THE REALITIES OF ACCOUNTABILITY (L-R) Hony Premlal, Anthony Taylor and Alex Lubbock explore why the golden thread needs a change of culture on data sharing


where design intention can be sidetracked by construction effi ciencies, without the necessary priority being mandated for overall safety. T e onus is now on social landlords to publish a ‘building safety case,’


put together by the Accountable Person and containing all of the relevant information on the building. How the data on safety risks should be recorded and managed, and how frequently they should be reviewed, are up for debate. Anthony Taylor said the Accountable Person faced an issue around “how


you review them when there is a change of ownership, change of FM provider, change of building manager?” He added: “T ere’s all sorts of stuff that I don’t think is being taken on board,” but despite this, he had “rarely seen an Accountable Person representative” at meetings. Taylor also said that simply using soſt ware and AI in future to establish


maintenance needs would not be the panacea. “Soſt ware will do whatever it’s asked to do, but the old adage of rubbish in, rubbish out, is a huge problem; it’s the management and the verifi cation of it.”


SILOS & STANDARDISATION Some standardisation of the data was needed in order for the golden thread to be practically deliverable, said delegates. But they also agreed there were problems around data sharing, which was working against the effi ciency of this approach. Chris Lees of Data Clan, who was instrumental in developing the golden


thread approach itself, said that many issues were being caused by the construction sector remaining in ‘information silos’ – which was leading to much unnecessary duplication. He said that standardisation was called for: “80% of the info we need is the same, but it ends up silo’d, which makes it diffi cult to share.” Lees said that due to the duplication, there was a perception that achieving the golden thread “is too expensive,” and people were unaware of the savings they will make. Some delegates such as Paul McSoley of CIBSE drew attention to the issues


around a lack of comprehensive product data being provided to design teams: “You can’t keep one little bit of Part B information on a product without the rest, because it means nothing.” Alex Lubbock said “standardisation of language” was key, and delegates


endorsed approaches such as CCPI (Code for Construction Products Information) as well as BIM for standardising information management to bring effi ciency in complex projects. T e emerging method of digital ‘product passports’ was also discussed, as was the urgent need, advocated by Anthony


“Harmonise the transfer of data so we’re


not doing digital duplication” Kevin Mangan, K Systems


Taylor, to “train FM staff to work with BIM.” T e potential of using ‘digital twins’ i.e. highly detailed digital models of


the building, was a “great idea” said Chris Lees, in theory at least, but with the caveat that they “require federation of the data, i.e. the data being in all sorts of diff erent places.” Digital product passports are “good examples,” he said, but “it makes no sense for everybody just to copy the data into their systems every time they use the product.” T ere was some disagreement about the worth of QR and RFID codes for


products in this new data environment, Lees calling their use “one of the most fl awed things I have heard in my life,” where instead we “have to be moving towards machine-interpretable information.” Ben Wallbank of Trimble, and Hamil from NBS pushed back, the former saying “if you’re on site and there’s little in the building, two rooms might look identical.”


BUILDING TRUST Delegates also warned that it was imperative to engage social housing tenants in ongoing maintenance within the operational phase of golden thread projects, with issues around trust persisting in the sector post-Grenfell. T is was exacerbated by problems with collaboration and data sharing in social housing and construction teams. Hony Premlal, who is a consultant and mentor in the social housing sector, said “accountability means changing the culture fi rst.” She asserted: “Systems are not interlinked, and teams are not speaking to each other, including within teams!” In terms of how best to engage with residents around the ongoing


maintenance regimes under the golden thread, Chris Lees said that achieving trust wasn’t simple: “You can’t impose trust on tenants, what you can do is respect them, and if you do that enough, they’ll start to trust you.” Using personal data was constrained by regulations (principally GDPR),


and Lees clarifi ed one issue raised by the chair, i.e. a view in the sector that data needed to be deleted from databases if not currently needed: “T is is a really common misconception. You don’t need to delete things just because you don’t have a current and present use for them.” However, he warned there were


Housing Management & Maintenance August/September 2025


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