FOCUS
Hit the trail Drawing on Grenfell and its inquiry, Stuart Bell advocates easy access to a single version of all project and asset information across the lifecycle
A
LTHOUGH THE second phase of the Grenfell inquiry has been suspended to comply with social distancing, the pessimism
evident in the earlier stages still lingers, with the likelihood of no party stepping forward to take responsibility for what happened on 14 June 2017. What the industry can hope for however is
the change the inquiry will trigger, even though it is equally disappointing to see that it took an event on this scale to call for radical reviews into building regulations and fi re safety. There is, for instance, much to be learnt from an information management perspective, particularly its implications for the safety of a building and the visibility of those who can be held accountable if something goes wrong. Clear and efficient project and asset
information management is crucial to maintaining Dame Judith Hackitt’s all important ‘golden thread’ of information. With that in mind, what is the best approach for asset owners to adopt that will ensure data is easily retrievable when required across the lifecycle of the asset, and help make sure that an event such as the Grenfell Tower fi re stays fi rmly in the past?
32 JUNE 2020
www.frmjournal.com Why insource data?
To prepare for the proceedings into the second phase, up to 200,000 contractor documents had to be sourced, identifi ed and analysed in order to ascertain which products were used, who supplied them and whether they complied with regulations. For this inquiry, external companies were brought in to mine enormous amounts of unstructured data, and discern which parties could be held liable if they did not comply with their contractual obligations. Sourcing hundreds of thousands of pieces of
data from different members of the Grenfell supply chain is very expensive and time consuming, not to mention highly informal and ambiguous. The fragmentation of the construction supply chain complicates this further; there can be a lot of disconnection at an information management level. It is incumbent upon the contracting
parties to maintain a full, clear audit trail of communications, subject to their contractual responsibilities. Yet where there is disconnection, piecing together disparate datasets makes for a complex tapestry that takes months to complete.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
