By David Shepherd, Product Manager (Data & Construction Programme Enablers)
The PwC Evidence: The Value Is in the Payload, Not the Process
The PwC Benefits Measurement Report (2018), commissioned by Innovate UK, explains why. It is the most robust, Green Book aligned analysis of BIM benefits ever produced in the UK, and its findings reveal a structural flaw in how BIM has evolved.
PwC applied its Benefits Measurement Methodology (BMM) to two public assets:
• DoH 39 Victoria Street office refurbishment
o Whole life PV benefit: £676,907 (3.0%)
o 73% of benefits occurred in operations, mainly through improved maintenance.
• Environment Agency Foss Barrier Upgrade
o Whole life PV benefit: £367,693 (1.5%)
o 61% of benefits predicted in operations, contingent on collecting structured as built data for an AIM.
Crucially, PwC highlighted that these totals are conservative estimates because many benefits (clash resolution, change control, material savings) could not be quantified due to missing structured project/asset data, not because those benefits don’t exist.
In other words, PwC could only quantify what the project actually recorded, but because key BIM benefits rely on structured information that wasn’t captured, the totals represent conservative minimums.
This means that, for digitally enabled project delivery, the overwhelming majority of economic value comes from structured data that can be federated for use in operations, not from container-level process compliance.
In fact, at best, ISO-19650’s focus on the latter can only yield 0.7–1.4% of capex, while payload-driven maintenance benefits account for 61–73% of whole-life value.
This is the heart of the industry’s problem: the UK successfully industrialised process but never industrialised compliant payload delivery.
PwC’s quantification of O&M savings enabled by accurate asset data
To quantify value across the lifecycle, PwC asked (in effect), “What would the lifecycle cost have been without BIM enabled structured asset information?”
For example:
• In the case of the Department of Health refurbishment (39 Victoria Street), £492,669 of the total £676,907 benefit came from operational savings over 12 years. That’s over 70% of the total.
• For the Environment Agency’s Foss Barrier upgrade, over three fifths of total benefits came from future maintenance cost reductions, the single largest benefit category.
These maintenance savings depend directly on:
• having accurate asset registers
• knowing where assets are
• understanding their attributes and manufacturer details
• having commissioning data
• avoiding missing or incorrect O&M information
Table 1- Benefits of structured asset data within information containers
A. Reduced asset maintenance cost Direct result of reliable as installed information.
B. Reduced time spent locating and verifying plant known benefit of having structured asset data linked to spaces and systems.
C. Improved planning and execution of PPM enabled by correct asset types, serial numbers, install dates, maintenance intervals.
D. Reduced downtime and fewer reactive interventions dependent on having correct PPM schedules from suppliers/subcontractors.
E. Improved safety and compliance especially important in life safety systems (fire dampers, emergency lighting), where missing data imposes massive risk exposure.
So, PwC’s methodology positions the structured O&M payload not as a document deliverable but as a direct enabler of reduced operational expenditure and quantifies these benefits accordingly.
The value PwC quantifies depends on having structured, accurate, accessible asset information at handover. PwC also specifically identified challenges in realising benefits when supporting data was missing or incomplete, which suppressed measurable gains in some categories (e.g., clash/change control) due to lack of evidence.
Why not rely on post-construction maintenance audits?
A post construction audit amounts to a salvage operation. In contrast, capturing asset data through the construction supply chain is a value creation operation.
The latter gives you:
• higher accuracy: the people who physically install, test and commission the assets are closest to the product. They’re in possession of manufacturer data. They’re handling serial numbers and QR labels. They’re also capturing warranty details, and directly carrying out commissioning activities
• lower cost: construction-phase capture is 70 – 90% cheaper because
o installers already handle assets
o data capture ‘piggybacks’ on installation process
o no rework is needed to access hidden plant (after void closure)
• regulatory compliance: certain assets require legally bound information that must be documented at the moment of installation:
o fire dampers
o fire doors
o pressure vessels
o life-safety equipment
o emergency lighting
o gas safety systems
o medical gases
o lifts
o electrical distribution gear
• warranty assurance – warranties depend on correct installation dates, commissioning evidence, serial numbers, product provenance, supplier identities. In contrast, post construction auditors rarely know when an asset was installed or which subcontractor installed it.
• defect reduction – asset data captured during installation immediately reveals
o wrong models delivered
o unauthorised substitutions
o mismatched equipment
o missing commissioning data
o noncompliant products
o incorrect locations
• operational readiness – supply-chain captured data enables:
o CAFM upload before handover
o PPM regimes scheduled before occupation
o asset hierarchies set up while contractors are still on site
o budgets, capital depreciation schedules and forward maintenance plans created early
• digital integration – an app for the supply chain to capture O&M asset data can be configured to facilitate grouping assets by the system that the installer is setting up. Post-construction auditors, who were not involved in installing the system, will inevitably omit assets.
• portfolio-wide standardisation – an app for the supply chain to capture O&M asset data can be configured to enforce portfolio-wide:
o consistency of attribute naming
o consistency of asset categorisation
o consistency of mapping to CAFM attributes
o application of correct PPM templates
o enterprise benchmarking
In summary, the supply chain can create a dataset that cannot be recreated later, at any cost.
Conclusion: focus on structured asset data capture from SMEs
All structured data originates with SMEs, whether installers, maintainers, fabricators, and specialist designers. These are the people who know the assets.
If SMEs cannot contribute structured data easily, the entire value chain (upon which the benefits of BIM were predicated) collapses. And that is precisely what happened.
Therefore, to unlock the PwC validated benefits, SMEs need:
• A simple, pre-structured data capture environment, using controlled vocabulary for classification and capable of storing photographic evidence.
• Prioritisation of statutory asset data (see table below)
• Zero BIM jargon (no COBie, no LOIN, no IFC schemas).
• A SaaS platform that can converts SME inputs into CAFM-ready payloads for Tier 1 and clients.
• Integrations with familiar platforms such as Excel and SharePoint.
This creates the missing bottom up push. It also creates the social proof that BS 1192 enjoyed in the Avanti/T5 era: SMEs see their peers using simple tools to produce structured data that wins work and reduces handover hassles.
In Article 3, I will explain how a ‘freemium’ SME payload tool could be implemented as an economic enabler for the entire construction sector. This will facilitate the restoration of the 2011 strategic vision that no standards framework can ever deliver by itself.
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