Building safety: IWFM welcomes new Golden Thread guidance 

News

The Building Safety Alliance, a cross-sector collaboration of leading industry figures and associations – including IWFM – this week published detailed guidance around the ‘golden thread’ concept. The aim is to ensure that all necessary information is available to anyone with a role in understanding, and controlling for, safety risks throughout the entire lifecycle of a higher-risk building.  

The Building Safety Act 2022 requires accountable persons to demonstrate the effective assessment and management of building safety risks through the collation and maintenance of information. The new guidance can be used to identify the key data that needs to be specified for the golden thread information requirements.  

The work builds on the Construction Leadership Council's golden thread guidance released last year and has been undertaken over several years of voluntary effort by an expert panel.  While this edition of the guidance is aiming to support technical people familiar with the legislation and its golden thread requirements, the publication signals a soft launch. Stakeholders are invited to join the collaboration to adapt this standardised approach to the wider range users and personas in the built environment that need to meet golden thread duties. 

Gordon Mitchell, Chair of the Building Safety Alliance Special Interest (SIG) Group 3, and Chair of IWFM’s Technology SIG, said:  

“Our aim was to integrate existing standards and industry frameworks - such as ISO19650, various safety standards and Uniclass - to enable harmonisation and compatibility, streamline processes, and enhance information sharing across the built environment.  

But we’re not done yet, we’re seeking to deliver on a long-term vision of a fully integrated and digitally enabled built environment of the 2050 world and will continue to collaborate in the building safety space to that end.”  

IWFM is working on wider Information Management guidance for the sector. If you’re keen to be involved, please contact [email protected]. 

You can download the guidance for free from buildingsafetyalliance.org.uk.