The Organization Information Handbook in BIM processes
The “Organization Information Handbook”, what’s it used for and how is it structured? The strategic guidance tool for all BIM processes
If you’re already finding BIM a little bit confusing, the number of acronyms that appear in almost every sentence probably isn’t helping. That’s why I thought I’d cover some of the most important aspects relating to the “Organization Information Handbook” in a series of articles.
In the upcoming posts, I’ll also provide a useful BIM glossary with all of the main acronyms and their meanings referring to operational and strategic procedures, tools and documents.
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What is the “Organization Information Handbook”
The Organization Information HandBook is a document that has been generated with the need to establish general rules, in order to organize any BIM process in an optimal way.
Primarily, it is a document closely linked to tools such as the Quality Manual (ISO 9000), which sets standard for Quality Management Systems.
With the development of BIM, a series of new operational and managerial problems have in fact emerged concerning BIM document management. Therefore, adopting a discipline capable of structuring BIM processes is essential.
BEP (BIM Execution Plan) is no longer sufficient in this case, as it is not designed to meet the complexity of the system, roles and processes at an “organization” level.
At present, the definition of an Information Management Manual is just a proposal still in the process of being systematised, that is however referring to both national and international standards:
- ISO 19650 at international level
- PAS 1192 in Great Britain.
The objective stated by these standards is to propose a well-defined information structure in the general framework of building processes that would complete the direction outlined by the current legal framework.
The organisational structure
As already mentioned above, the drafting of the Information Management Manual remains a proposal.
However, a first hypothesis regarding what the future structure of the Manual and the annexes should include is already clear.
Here’s a list of the Organization Information Handbook annexes:
- OIR – Organization Information Requirement
- OIM – Organization Information Maps
- AIB – Asset Information HandBook
- AIR – Asset Information Requirements
- AIM – Asset Information Model
- PIB – Project Information HandBook
- PIR – Project Information Requirements
- PIM – Project Information Model
- EIR – Exchange Information Requirement
- IDP – Information Delivery Planning
- BEP – BIM Execution Plan
- PDM – Platform Data Management
- CDE – Common Data Environment
- DR – Data Room.
These are all “strategic” guidance documents that go beyond the single intervention and are indispensable for the construction of an entire organisational system.
BIM procedures, tools and documents
During the the early stages of BIM, more and more attention was given to processes related to the management of individual orders, i.e. those defined as “operational” in nature.
On one hand, we have documents such as Information Specifications concerning the demand for information management, and on the other, documents such as Information Management Plans and the BIM Execution Plans, for the offer of information management. Finally, the information management tools (the Common Data Environment or Data Sharing Environment).
Only recently have there been better attempts that focus on structuring BIM rules, roles and processes at a company level.
