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Andrew Van DoornAndrew is the Chief Executive of HACT. HACT partners with organisations across the housing sector to drive value for residents and ...more
2020 will be a tough year for the housing sector. Meeting the challenge starts with data
The challenges of cost in 2020 can be met if housing associations develop better ways of collecting data on the buildings they own, argues Andrew van Doorn
Whatever happens on 12 December, the social housing sector is facing one of its most financially challenging years in 2020.
The implications of the Hackitt Review will be, no doubt, the dominant theme of many budget-setting meetings. At the same time, social housing organisations are also having to weigh up the financial implications of their obligations to low-carbon emissions targets, as well as a real possibility that many will be faced with legal claims under the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, especially when it extends to all existing tenancies in March 2020.
Yet it is the Hackitt Review that is the dominant concern for most, especially with the changing scope of higher-risk buildings from 30m to 18m, which has put many more existing buildings into the picture.
The G15 has estimated that the total cost of making all its existing buildings fire-safe could be as much as £6.9bn. And that’s before you take into account the ongoing costs of implementing the new regulatory system, which could be as much as £90,000 per building per year.
So is there any good news in all of this?
One potential source of relief is data. Or rather, it should be.
The problem is that data is still a huge minefield for many social housing organisations. When it comes to the Hackitt Review, many social housing organisations don’t know which of their buildings are high risk because they don’t have the necessary data, or can’t trust the data they have. So they are now working out how they can collect the necessary data on all of their existing buildings, which is another potential cost.
So where’s the potential relief?
Well, the Hackitt Review also proposes that every building should have its own digital passport, the so-called golden thread of information that should run throughout the life cycle of a building.
This, though, isn’t the source of relief. Because, when it comes to new builds, everyone involved in the design, construction and maintenance of a building knows that the current state of data collation, categorisation and maintenance is haphazard, inconsistent and often mismanaged.
Throughout the development chain there’s numerous data exchanges between architects, contractors, surveyors, sub-contractors and housing associations. And when the development is completed and ready for handover, there’s another, often fraught, data exchange between the development team and the asset management team.
“When it comes to new builds, everyone involved in the design, construction and maintenance of a building knows that the current state of data collation, categorisation and maintenance is haphazard, inconsistent and often mismanaged”
At any point in these data exchanges, information is lost, duplicated, inputted incorrectly or simply forgotten. It’s little wonder that building information management is a major source of frustration and financial inefficiency across the sector.
And now we come to the potential source of relief.
Understanding how important data is to social housing organisations was one of the fundamental reasons why we started developing the UK Housing Data Standard in 2017. Last month, we launched version 3.2 of the standard. As with all the previous versions, it was designed by the sector, for the sector.
The latest iteration includes data standards for managing care and support processes, asset management, and income collection, adding to the existing standards around the repairs process. The standards are, and always will be, free to use.
Against the backdrop of the Hackitt Review, it’s pertinent that the next area we’re focusing on for the data standards is the development handover process. We will also be looking at how we can support the complex and diverse approaches to the life cycle asset data by offering a housing sector data model to augment Business Information Modelling (BIM) processes.
BIM is perceived as one potential solution to the requirement for a digital passport. Yet there are a wide range of approaches to BIM. Currently each Employer’s Information Requirement (EIR) or Client Information Requirement (CIR), might use a different set of data standards, which results in further complications in procuring BIM in new projects and raises costs across the sector. What can help is a housing association real estate data model that can be deployed on BIM projects and be pre-loaded in every BIM software package, using the same data standards.
This would mean the data the architects, surveyors and contractors you employed to design and build your homes was categorised using the same data standards.
These same standards would then be used by the surveyors you commission to collect data on all your existing buildings so you could assess whether or not they were high risk.
These same standards would also be adopted by tech companies to develop software so you can view your asset management issues in real time, helping you identify potential business opportunities and manage risks more efficiently and effectively.
“The wider and deeper the development and adoption of data standards, the more likely your residents will live in better built, better maintained, cheaper to maintain, and safer homes”
These same standards would give you an unprecedented level of future-proofing, shorten development cycles for your internal change and transformation projects and increase opportunities for cross-sector collaboration.
The good news is that many of these standards already exist. And that many organisations have already adopted them and are using them in their business. Numerous organisations have also already signed up to get involved in creating development handover data standards.
And there’s still opportunities for more organisations, including contractors, architects, surveyors and designers to come on board, whether in developing, supporting or investing in the standards.
Because the reality is that this is an issue that is affecting the whole sector, the whole time.
And data standards provide the opportunity for a collective response to this issue around data.
The more organisations who are involved in developing the standards, the better homes we will be able to build and maintain in the future, at a lower cost, for the benefit of everyone.
The wider and deeper the development and adoption of data standards, the more likely your residents will live in better built, better maintained, cheaper to maintain, and safer homes.
Wouldn’t that be a good way to start the new year, regardless of the election result?
Andrew van Doorn, chief executive, HACT
