Details of a new contractual obligation to include “Government Soft Landings” on all central government procured contracts from 2016 are expected to be published online next week (28 Feb).
GSL creates new responsibilities for the project team around the hand-over and post-completion monitoring of projects, including their energy performance.
The documents will be the “surprise” element in a package of information briefing the industry on how the government expects it to deliver BIM due to be published on the BIM Task group website next week. The plan to link implementation of GSL to the BIM “mandate” was first revealed in CM (October).
Richard Saxon CBE, a member of the government’s BIM Task Group, predicted that the implementation of GSL could lead to new contractual arrangements between government clients and project teams.
He told CM: ”The industry will need to take operating costs into account just as much as capital costs – the ramifications of that are considerable and not yet fully considered.
“In the end, the lines of responsibility will become connected – the flow of information on how much it costs to deliver the service will have an effect on what clients ask for in the first place.
Saxon: “different ways”
“There could be a variety of different ways of doing this – you could have handover with an extended defects period, or you don’t hand over but three years’ of FM is part of the contract.
Saxon added: “Government will store all the information and use it as a way of improving briefs, setting goals and benchmarking performance and price.”
As with BIM, project teams working for all central government departments and executive bodies (such as the Highways Agency and Education Funding Agency) will be expected to deliver GSL on all contracts from 2016. This covers projects of any value, including smaller refurbishments.
Local authorities are not directly included in the BIM or GSL mandate, but many are expected to fall into line anyway.
Other documents due to go live on the BIM Task Group website next week include the delayed BIM Protocol and the new Digital Work Plan, which divides all work associated with the delivery of a project into seven stages.
A further document, PAS 1192:2, sets out a standard protocol for document management suited to BIM data exchanges.
The BIM Protocol was completed late last year, but its publication was put back to allow the “family” of BIM documents to be released together.
The BIM documents are then due to be publicly launched by Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith at Ecobuild the following week.
