constructrr
Artwork for “BIM - Your Path to Compliance”
Type
Audio podcast
Primary guest
With Marzia Bolpagni

BIM - Your Path to Compliance

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Clear Information Requirements Come Before BIM Compliance

By Brittanie Campbell-Turner

Published on Constructrr

A model can meet one team's expectations and still fail the person who needs to use its information later. Marzia Bolpagni traced that problem back to the client in a 2019 Constructrr conversation. The client has to understand the purpose of the information, set the requirement, and decide how the result will be checked and validated.

Without that direction, each discipline is likely to produce what fits its own work.

The client defines what useful information means

Marzia Bolpagni described the need to start with an intelligent client. She was not asking clients to become modeling experts. She was asking them to understand what information matters, why it matters, and what the receiving team must be able to do with it.

Her view covered more than technology. Process, people, and policy also shaped the implementation. If the purpose is unclear, a model can be detailed and still be unfit for the downstream use.

A requirement becomes easier to judge when its purpose is named in plain language. A room record, equipment field, document, or geometric condition should connect to a decision the client or operator expects to make.

Structure the checks that a machine can repeat

In 2019, Marzia Bolpagni said much of the checking process remained manual. She distinguished verification from validation and discussed turning some requirements into machine-readable rules.

That creates a useful boundary. A system can check whether required information is present or whether an explicit rule has been met. It cannot decide every question of fitness, context, or professional judgment. Marzia said it directly: “the human part is still important.”

The team should be honest about which checks are objective enough to automate and which results still need a person to interpret or approve.

Match the contract to the way people are expected to work

Marzia Bolpagni also connected collaborative delivery to procurement and contracts. A project cannot ask people to share responsibility and information while its commercial terms reward a conflicting behavior.

Requirements, production, checking, validation, and accountability belong to one process. If the contract does not reflect the intended collaboration, the model team is left to manage a commercial gap with technical work.

Read the requirement from the requester's side to the validator's. The review should show who asks for it, who produces it, which checks a machine can repeat, who owns the remaining judgment, and which agreement gives that person authority to act.

Compliance becomes useful when the right information is requested for a real purpose, checked at the right level, and accepted by the person responsible for the next decision.

Recording information

People, topics, and original sources for this recording and article.

Original show notesGuest links and notes from the original episode page.

Marzia Bolpagni is a BIM Management Consultant at Mace, BIM Dictionary Co-Editor, BIM Advocate

We had a good conversation on what BIM looking like today and compliance within public regulations and client specifications. We talk about how the UK is figuring out how to maximize BIM Level 2 requirements from PAS 1192, how we are transitioning to ISO 19650 as a new standard, and what good BIM looks like.

Some great BIM resources we discussed are here:


Find out more about Marzia Bolpagni:


At a glance

Original source date
People
  • Marzia Bolpagni, BIM management consultant, client advisor, European BIM standardization task-group leader, and BIM Dictionary assistant editor

Original source and related links