Karen Alford is Flood and Coastal Risk Manager for the Environment Agency, specialising in asset data and information.

In this guest blog, she charts the organisation’s digital journey and delves into the Information Management Platform (IMP), which enables organisations to develop a portfolio level digital Information Management strategy that can be progressively assembled from existing, and, if necessary, new enterprise systems.

Many asset owners rely on supply chain partners to generate most of their data and information for project and operational decisions.  This can range from asset and geometry-based data, engineering calculations, to survey and sensor data.  Like a factory these are their raw materials needed for decision-making but unlike a manufacturer rigorous acceptance criteria and quality check are not routinely carried out before acceptance.   Given that this data and information forms the lifeblood of an asset management organisation why do we not consider checking before accepting?

Digital requires a different approach.  One that seeks to generate data right at source, fit for all intended purposes and capable of being assured against a defined specification before use. ISO19650 provides the toolkit for an asset owner to specify, procure and accept standard data. This is further strengthened for Government Departments in the Transforming Infrastructure Performance Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)  Information Management Mandate.  In response to this mandate, under the leadership of Government Industry Interoperability Group (GIIG), the Information Management Platform Information Interoperability | CPNI  has been developed to provide knowledge and guidance to asset owners on the components of a structured automated approach to assurance and delivery of whole life data.

The Environment Agency has a large flood defence asset base and a £5.2 six-year programme to improve flood resilience across England.  In 2011 the Environment Agency was one of the Government departments required to deliver the Building Information Modelling (BIM) Mandate. It took about four years to introduce the BIM basics to new projects in the capital programme and provide the supporting processes and technology.   Implementing the BIM mandate identified gaps in our approach to data procurement despite being so reliant on our delivery partners to provide most of the data and information for our asset management business.

We set about building a programme to understand and develop approaches to fill those gaps.  Despite being reliant upon our delivery partners for data we did not provide easy access to the asset data required.  The first project was to create a reference library, known as the Data Requirements Library (DRL) Asset Categories (data.gov.uk), to detail our data requirements in human and machine readable form.  As part of this development, using existing asset data structures, we worked with NBS to agree and generate Uniclass codes for our assets, determined the project stage for data delivery and the location within COBie data exchange template.  The management of data standards now forms part of our Governance arrangements to control and align data across the asset management business.

As part of the BIM toolkit, we introduced an Employers (Exchange) Information Requirements at Framework level leaving only project specific requirements to be agreed at project level. We embedded a standardised way of scoping and tracking delivery of information, known as the Information Delivery Plan, into our common data environment (CDE) and as part of the periodic updates to the EIR introduced a requirement for 3D models and data delivery to our standards.

We had to determine how to assure the asset data but also aspects of compliance against our EIR requirements in an automated way.  The Information Management Platform (IMP) was born. Right from the start we knew it had to be dynamic and reasonably easy to maintain and manage ourselves. Although we are starting with basic asset data, the intent is to expand to cover all data including cost, carbon, and time data.

We built a core set of rules to test the data against our standards. Although some rules are hard coded most are dynamic and able to check the DRL requirements at the time the contract was signed. Given the data requirements will change over time change history has to be managed so the rules can check the version applicable at the time the contract was signed. Our IMP, known as AIMS: Datastore, Rules and Visualisation uses FME and 1Integrate software, a product from 1Spatial.  Every 15 minutes it checks for a COBie file in the CDE.  Once present the file is collected, its content checked, and a compliance report produced.  If the data fails the checks, a report is returned to the supplier describing the errors. This process continues until the data passes the checks.  Once accepted it is sent to a datastore ahead of pushing the data into our asset management systems.

Building an assurance capability to cover current data requirements and be capable of expanding to deal with all data requirements into a single approach, before automating into business systems and technologies, is the primary purpose the Information Management Platform.  Like a manufacturer it provides an asset management business with the ability to be confident with their raw materials. The raw materials may be different but that should not deter from having a consistent process for assurance.