A pan-industry initiative is helping construction product manufacturers be ready for the government’s April 2016 BIM mandate.

The Construction Products Association (CPA), the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE), National Building Specification (NBS) and BIM4M2* have joined forces to provide product data parameters and templates to enable manufacturers to get their product information ready for Level 2 building information modelling (BIM).

The organisations have agreed to align their processes, approach and terminology to enable ‘consistent and transparent’ development of product data templates. The aim is to give manufacturers a common industry-wide standard for product data parameters and templates.

By using these templates manufacturers will be able to supply product information in a form that aligns with the UK’s Level 2 BIM requirements.  Each template defines the minimum information about a product that is required for UK government BIM projects.

BIM Task Group chairman Mark Bew said: “When the BIM Task Group identified the client data requirements which are now provided in the BIM Toolkit, we were looking for other communities to work together to provide their own common data requirements.  This initiative from the products and manufacturing sector signals an important collaboration from industry which will add significant value and clarity.” 

The initiative is expected to lead to the provision of higher quality project data that can be checked and validated by clients, designers and contractors. 

CPA deputy chief executive Peter Caplehorn said:  “We are at a point where clarity and ease of use of product data is vital for everyone to make progress.  We are very pleased to be part of the initiative and will be encouraging all manufacturers to take part.” 

The templates and common product data parameters will be made available on both the CPA and NBS BIM Toolkit websites as well as the CIBSE website. The current product data templates defining the minimum information for Level 2 BIM can be found at toolkit.thenbs.com/articles/pdts

* BIM4M2 – BIM for Manufacturers and Manufacturing – is the manufacturers’ BIM working group.