Building Safety Act: Achieve Compliance with your BIM Data in Power BI

The construction and real estate sector is undergoing a significant transformation, especially with the introduction of the Building Safety Act. This Act granted Royal Assent on 28 April 2022, bringing about ground-breaking reforms to ensure safer residential buildings across the UK. For built environment professionals in these sectors, compliance with the Act is not just a legal necessity but also a testament to their commitment to safety and quality. One of the tools that can significantly assist in compliance efforts is the integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) with Microsoft Power BI (PBI).

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What are the implications of the Building Safety Act for AECO stakeholders?

The Building Safety Act has broad implications for a range of stakeholders within the construction and real estate sectors. This includes owners, architects, engineers, property developers, construction workers, operations, and real estate professionals. Integral to the building lifecycle, these stakeholders must adapt and align their practices to ensure compliance with the Act's stipulations. Before delving into the solution, it's crucial to understand the key components of the Building Safety Act:

1. Resident and Homeowner Protections: The Act empowers residents and homeowners by providing them with more rights, powers, and protections. It ensures that homes across the UK become safer and offers protection for qualifying leaseholders from costs associated with remediating historical building safety defects.

2. Regulatory Overhaul: The Act introduces significant changes to existing regulations, establishing clear guidelines on how residential buildings should be constructed, maintained, and made safe.

3. New Regulatory Bodies: Three new bodies have been created under the Act:

- Building Safety Regulator (BSR): Focuses on the safety and performance of all buildings, with a particular emphasis on high-rise buildings.

- National Regulator of Construction Products (NRCP): Ensures the effectiveness of the construction products regulatory regime.

- New Homes Ombudsman: Addresses complaints related to new-build homes.

4. Leaseholder Protections: The Act eliminates the notion that leaseholders should bear the costs for historical safety defects. Building owners can't legally charge qualifying leaseholders for cladding removal or remediation expenses.

5. Accountability and Responsibility: The Act defines clear lines of responsibility for building safety risks during the design, construction, and completion phases. Those who fail to meet their obligations may face criminal charges.

6. Industry Implications: The Act establishes a clear framework for the design, construction, and management of safer, high-quality homes. It also introduces a new developer tax and levy to ensure the industry contributes to rectifying past mistakes.

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Why do I need to achieve compliance quickly and efficiently?

Achieving compliance with the Building Safety Act necessitates a thorough inspection and interrogation of building data across its entire lifecycle. Building Information Modeling (BIM) is central to this process, which offers a comprehensive view of every facet of a construction project and in the case of compliance unveils all aspects of used materials. Gaining access to this crucial information and displaying it via business intelligence tools like Power BI from Microsoft enables professionals to easily delve deep into BIM data, extract pivotal insights, and ensure successful adherence to the Act's standards. Here is a list of benefits you can expect:

• Data-Driven Insights: By integrating BIM with Power BI, construction and real estate professionals can derive actionable insights from their data. This can help identify potential safety risks and ensure that buildings are constructed and maintained as per the guidelines set by the Building Safety Act.

• Real-time Reporting: Power BI's real-time reporting capabilities allow professionals to monitor construction progress and safety compliance in real time. This ensures that deviations from the set standards are immediately identified and rectified.

• Stakeholder Communication: The visual reports generated by Power BI can be shared with stakeholders, including residents and homeowners. This promotes transparency and ensures that all parties are informed about the implemented safety measures.

• Compliance Tracking: The solution can be used to track compliance with the various provisions of the Building Safety Act. This not only ensures legal compliance but also helps in building trust with residents and homeowners.

• Continuous Improvement: The insights derived from the integration can be used for constant improvement. By analyzing past projects, professionals can identify areas of improvement and implement best practices in future projects.

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How do you simplify your Building Safety Act compliance?

Navigating the Building Safety Act compliance can be a daunting task, especially when the value of BIM data remains largely untapped for stakeholders beyond just architects and BIM managers. Owners, developers, contractors, subcontractors, and facility managers can all benefit immensely from this data as this data forms the DNA of the building. However, the market needs a user-friendly, scalable solution that integrates seamlessly with tools like Power BI. This is exactly what VIM was built to do, bridging these gaps.

The AEC industry is riddled with challenges, from missing data interoperability due to varied software solutions, leading to data silos or swamps, to the duplication of efforts or data loss at handovers. The result? A disjointed data flow from the design phase to the building's operation. Moreover, existing BIM models often need more quality details, lack integration with other data sources, and need help with scalability, especially when merging different sub-models. Rendering these vast and cumbersome geometries can be time-consuming, often necessitating multiple Revit or IFC files, further fragmenting the data. Imagine your data is seamlessly integrated with a high-performance digital twin, enabling anyone in your organization to effortlessly view, filter and scrutinize the specific building information essential for achieving compliance.

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VIM emerges as the game-changer in this scenario. It empowers you to visualize data in 3D and provides access to federated models, ensuring an updated, real-time holistic view. With VIM, businesses can automate data validation through Power BI, relate BIM data to other valuable datasets for enhanced insights by utilizing VIM`s structured and relational database. This means that data is no longer confined to Autodesk Revit/IFC experts; it becomes accessible to a broader audience without the need for additional training or licensing fees for software products. In summary, here’s 5 reasons why you should consider using Power BI for your data governance.

1. Seamless Integration: VIM's compatibility with Power BI ensures that BIM data is effortlessly imported, allowing for a smooth transition from raw data to actionable insights tailored for Building Safety Compliance.

2. Real-time 3D Visualization: VIM's advanced BIM data model, when paired with Power BI's real-time 3D WebGL custom visual, offers a dynamic and interactive view of construction projects, highlighting areas crucial for compliance.

3. Comprehensive Data Analysis: With VIM's structured SQL database in an open file format, Power BI can delve deep into BIM data, extracting pivotal insights that ensure every facet of a project aligns with Building Safety standards.

4. User-Friendly Interface: The combination of VIM and Power BI provides an intuitive platform, eliminating the need for coding expertise. This ensures that professionals across the board, from architects to facility managers, can easily interpret and act on the data.

5. Cost-Efficient Reporting: VIM's integration with Power BI eliminates additional subscription fees, making it a cost-effective solution for companies to generate detailed business intelligence reports essential for Building Safety Compliance.

VIM's integration with Microsoft Power BI allows unlimited report sharing without incurring extra subscription costs. In essence, VIM is the foundation for companies aiming to harness the full potential of BIM data, ensuring compliance with the Building Safety Act while championing efficiency, transparency, and safety innovation. Here are hypothetical business intelligence reports that anyone could create with VIM to ensure and monitor safety and regulations:

Building Products Dashboard

Evaluating and tracking the safety of construction products used in the building, ensuring they meet the required guidelines set by the Building Safety Act. Here's a report on VIM Cloud that shows Architectural Building Product Hyperlinks report tied to the BIM data that can be expanded upon and customized for compliance.

Building Safety Regulator Submission Dashboard‍

A collation of all mandatory safety information, including design, construction, and fire safety information and features, that needs to be provided to the Building Safety Regulator.

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Explore the capabilities of VIM Cloud for a deeper understanding of how VIM can be your solution to BIM data governance. Our platform offers free tailored reports to support your compliance and safety needs.

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