Modern Building Services

MODERN BUILDING SERVICES DECEMBER 2022/JANUARY 2023 11 FEATURE WORKING BUILDINGS properly targeted to reduce running costs and carbon emissions, with inappropriate funds allocated to keep buildings operating safely and efficiently. The organisations’ plan is to publish a cost and maintenance ‘playbook’ that will explain how quantity surveyors and FM/ maintainers should set about gathering asset data using digital tools. To achieve this, they are bringing together SFG20 , the industry standard for building maintenance developed by BESA, with the RICS New Rules of Measurement (NRM) for building works and the BIM Construction Classification (Uniclass) developed by NBS, along with CIBSE’s Guide M best practice guidance for management and maintenance of engineering services. This is intended to bridge the gap between the collection of digital information at the construction stage or during refurbishment projects, to help building managers develop accurate asset registers that can informmaintenance plans, asset renewal/life cycle plans, and carbon assessments. “BIMmodels contain 80% of the data needed to create robust maintenance programmes, but most surveyors are not using it – it is being lost at handover,” explained Frise. By aligning SFG20 schedules with Uniclass classification and NRM 3 cost structures and CIBSE’s Guide M expected life tables, this can ensure the necessary information from ‘as built’ projects are handed over, to enable fully costed plans for the lifecycle operation and maintenance of buildings, saving precious time and money. Uniclass is embedded in the BIM process, but all the industry data bodies have agreed that there is a major problem at project handover, which leads to much of that design information not being used in the surveys that establish maintenance schedules and upload data into CAFM systems. Frise added that there was currently too much “guess work” involved in the production of life cycle cost plans, carbon assessment and maintenance programmes and, as a result, operation and maintenance is typically undervalued and, therefore, often “little more than a tick box exercise”. As part of the process of aligning standards, BESA has developed SFG20 Resource Modeller, a tool that allows maintenance professionals to cost their requirements and identify exactly what resource is required, also helping to identify what is the defendable running cost needed for the set service levels and meet legal requirements and energy and carbon reduction targets. The data alignment mapping work is well underway and, by bringing all the parties responsible for setting standards together, the group feels there is light at the end of the tunnel for achieving digitally enabled and fully planned and costed maintenance programmes. “Getting this right will be vital for making our buildings more efficient, safer, healthier and to put us on the road to Net Zero,” said Frise. Source 1 Economic significance of maintenance report 2022, BCIS. More information can be found at www.sfg20.co.uk www.thebesa.com