Hanging on by a Thread – Information Integrity in AEC

The Golden Thread of Information in AEC

A Comprehensive Framework for Trust, Transparency, and Transformation

Executive Summary

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the Golden Thread of Information, a critical framework for information management for the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector. It consolidates insights into why the Golden Thread is an ethical and operational imperative, what its core components and trust-building mechanisms are, and how it can be practically implemented. By analysing the interplay of People, Process, and Technology at each stage, this document aims to equip AEC professionals with the understanding needed to move from fragmented, analogue information practices towards structured, digital, and trustworthy information management. The Golden Thread is presented not just as a regulatory requirement but as a foundational shift towards enhancing safety, accountability, compliance, efficiency, and the overall value of built assets across their entire lifecycle.

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Introduction

The Golden Thread for information in AEC is defined as a continuous, structured, verifiable, and accessible flow of digital information throughout the entire lifecycle of a built asset. The critical imperative in the AEC sector is addressing historical fragmentation, inefficiencies, information failures (e.g., Grenfell Tower fire disaster in London UK in 2017), and the need for enhanced safety, accountability, and regulatory compliance. The concept of the Golden Thread was significantly detailed and propelled into industry consciousness by Dame Judith Hackitt’s “Building a Safer Future” report in 2018, following the Grenfell disaster, which emphasized the urgent need for a systemic approach to information management, particularly for high-risk buildings. This led to the UK Building Safety Act (BSA). The concepts are applicable world-wide.

This article is intended for AEC professionals, including building and infrastructure owners, managers, architects, engineers, contractors, project managers, information managers, and organizational and institutional leaders, providing them with a comprehensive understanding and practical guidance for implementing the Golden Thread.

The article is structured as follows:

• WHY – exploring the fundamental rationale,
• WHAT – its core components and principles, and,
• HOW – its practical implementation

Each section is analysed via the interplay of People, Process, and Technology, highlighting that this is not purely a technical or procedural issue, but also a cultural transformation.

Part 1: WHY – The Imperative for a Golden Thread

This section articulates the fundamental rationale and compelling ethical drivers for adopting the Golden Thread approach in the AEC sector.

1.1 PEOPLE: Ethical Responsibility, Cultural Shift, and Human Impact

AEC professionals carry a foundational professional and ethical duty of care to provide information that is accurate, timely, and auditable. This responsibility requires ensuring that data supports compliance with regulations, safety, quality, and long-term value, forming the basis of safe, functional buildings and infrastructure. This duty extends to protecting public safety and maintaining the integrity of the industry as a whole.

The adoption of the Golden Thread necessitates a significant cultural evolution within the AEC sector, moving away from passive assumptions and fragmented responsibility towards a culture of active accountability and transparency. This shift requires professionals to recognize data management not as an administrative burden, but as a strategic priority foundational to project success and safety. It calls for a move from a dismiss or blame culture, to one where information is proactively managed and shared. Such a profound change from traditional practices, which often rely heavily on assumption and unstructured analogue data, is often met with resistance, requiring both patience and persistence from all involved to embed new ways of working.

Leadership plays a crucial role in this transformation by championing information quality and fostering an information-centric organizational culture. Leaders must prioritize data quality and create an environment where information management is understood as everyone’s responsibility. They must also encourage collaboration and trust among stakeholders, ensuring that information is viewed as a shared asset benefiting the entire project and the public good.

The real-world impact of information failures, particularly highlighted by disasters like Grenfell Tower, underscores the human cost of poor information management. In the Grenfell case, for instance, it took emergency services 24 hours to find the gas stop valve, a critical delay demonstrating the severe consequences of inaccessible or poorly managed information. Such events emphasize the need for readily available and reliable information to prevent harm and ensure effective response in emergencies.

1.2 PROCESS: From Historical Fragmentation to Information Continuity and Compliance

Addressing historical challenges: The persistent problems of fragmented, inconsistent, and unreliable information management practices, often based on poor procedures and analogue methods like paper-based records and siloed data. These traditional approaches have frequently led to disjointed and inaccessible information, resulting in misunderstandings, duplication of work, costly errors, safety risks, and overall project inefficiencies. This fragmentation hinders the ability to verify and trust information when it’s critically needed.

The vision of the Golden Thread: Establishing a continuous, structured, verified, and accessible flow of digital information across the entire lifecycle of a built asset. This approach aims to ensure that the right information is consistently available to the right people at the right time. Such a system supports informed, proactive decisions that enhance project quality, public safety, and operational efficiency.

Key regulatory drivers for change: Legislation, such as the UK Building Safety Act (BSA), or upcoming EU Digital Building Logbook, are now mandating structured, auditable digital information management to enhance building safety and ensure compliance. While the BSA is UK-specific, its core principles of ensuring safety and reducing risk through better record-keeping are universal. This legislative push emphasizes the rising importance of information as a basis for regulatory compliance and professional protection.

Transforming data into wisdom: The process of moving beyond raw documentation by adding context through structured metadata, thereby creating actionable knowledge and value. This contextualization, often facilitated by metadata revealing origin, purpose, version, and status, allows users to assess data’s relevance and reliability, thereby supporting better business processes and asset management.

1.3 TECHNOLOGY: Enabling the Necessary Digital Transformation

Recognizing the limitations of traditional methods: Paper-based records and siloed data systems are recognized as inadequate for meeting the demands of modern, complex construction projects and increasingly stringent regulatory environments. These analogue systems limit visibility, accessibility, and the ability to properly check and verify information in a timely manner. The sheer volume and complexity of data in contemporary AEC projects, necessitate more robust and dynamic solutions.

Introduction to foundational technologies that enable and underpin the Golden Thread:

• Information management guided and standardized by frameworks such as the ISO 19650 series using Building Information Modelling (BIM) provides tools and processes for creating and managing structured digital information about assets.
• Common Data Environment (CDE) as a “Single Source of Truth” – a centralized or federated digital repository for managing, sharing, and disseminating project and asset information in a controlled and collaborative manner.

The role of emerging and supporting technologies in enhancing trust and efficiency:

• Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), like Blockchain for enhancing transparency, data integrity, and creating immutable, auditable records of information transactions and approvals. This is invaluable in complex, multi-party projects where disputes over accountability might arise.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) for analysing large datasets, identifying patterns, predict risks (such as in predictive maintenance), and automate routine tasks like data entry and document verification, thereby reducing human error and streamlining compliance.

Preparing for future advancements: Leveraging this digital foundation for innovations like Digital Twins for Smart Buildings and Smart Cities. This digital transformation, facilitated by technologies and structured by frameworks like the ISO 19650 standards, is a catalyst for addressing long-standing historical inefficiencies in the AEC sector.

Part 2: WHAT – Defining the Golden Thread: Components and Trust-Building Mechanisms

This section clarifies the foundational components, core principles, and trust-building mechanisms that underpin a robust and reliable Golden Thread.

2.1 PEOPLE: Competency, Responsibility, Professional Accountability, and Earning Trust

Clearly defined roles and responsibilities for duty holders, who must demonstrate competency, transparency, and professional integrity in information management. Regulations like the UK Building Safety Act place significant legal and professional accountability on these individuals to maintain accurate and auditable records. This increased emphasis means that professionals can no longer rely on informal documentation or assumptions.

Attribution as a cornerstone of accountability within the Golden Thread: Ensuring every piece of project information is clearly linked to the responsible party (individual, team, or organization) that created, modified, or approved it. This provides a clear record of who did what and when, which is essential for traceability and resolving issues. This mechanism helps prevent errors from being passed through the system without clear ownership.

Attestation as formal validation: Requiring competent professionals to formally validate that information is accurate, complete, compliant with relevant standards, and ready for use before it is used for decision-making or passed to other teams. Attestation reinforces the reliability of the information flow by ensuring each decision is backed by traceable, reliable information.

The indispensable role of human expertise and professional judgment: Technology serves as an aid, but critical decision-making, ethical oversight, and the verification of information integrity ultimately rely on skilled professionals. Technology augments human capabilities but does not replace the ultimate responsibility of professionals.

Shifting from “blind trust” to earned trust: Fostering an environment where confidence in information, processes, and professional accountability is built upon verifiable data, transparent workflows, and demonstrable due diligence. The principle of “Trust, but verify” must be foundational, especially in high-risk projects, moving away from the assumption that others or the system itself will catch errors.

2.2 PROCESS: Mechanisms and Standards for Ensuring Trustworthy Information

Essential characteristics of trustworthy Golden Thread information:

• Stored digitally, rather than in fragmented, paper-based formats.
• Tracked meticulously throughout its lifecycle, including submission, approval, acceptance, revision, and current status.
• Structured and linked with appropriate, standardized metadata to the specific assets, decisions, and risk assessments it relates to, ensuring context and relevance.
• Updated in real-time or near real-time to prevent risks from outdated or conflicting information.
• Easily accessible to those with legal and professional responsibility for safety, compliance, and decision-making.
• Auditable, providing a clear, immutable, and traceable history of what decisions were made, who approved them, and why.

Adherence to the “Trust, but verify” principle as a foundational tenet for information management within the Golden Thread, particularly in high-risk environments or complex projects. This approach moves away from relying on assumptions towards a system where information is actively checked and validated before being used. It means that while professionals trust their colleagues and systems, there are processes in place to verify the accuracy and completeness of information.

Implementation of structured frameworks and international standards is key to achieving a reliable Golden Thread, with the ISO 19650 series playing a central role. ISO 19650 provides a comprehensive framework for organizing and managing information about buildings and civil engineering works, including principles for building information modelling (BIM). It establishes a systematic approach to managing information across an asset’s lifecycle, aligning with other standards like ISO 9001 for Quality Management.

Application of quality management systems, particularly the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle described in ISO 9001, is vital for systematic quality management and fostering continuous improvement of information processes. This iterative cycle involves planning information requirements and processes, executing those plans, checking the outputs for compliance and quality, and then acting to make necessary improvements. This approach helps ensure that information management practices evolve and become more effective over time.

2.3 TECHNOLOGY: Tools Supporting Transparency, Verification, and Compliance

Core enabling platforms for the Golden Thread include Building Information Modelling (BIM) systems and federated Common Data Environments (CDEs). BIM platforms facilitate the creation, management, and utilization of structured digital information models, providing a rich dataset about the asset. Federated CDEs offer a collaborative environment where project information is shared and managed in a controlled way, ensuring that stakeholders have access to transparent, reliable, and current records across the asset lifecycle, even when multiple systems are in use.

Digital record-keeping systems and automated compliance checking tools are leveraged within the Golden Thread framework to reduce human error, improve efficiency, and support verification processes. These technologies can help ensure that project data is captured accurately, verified against predefined rules or standards, and made traceable. Automated checks can flag non-compliance or inconsistencies, allowing for quicker remediation.

The strategic application of emerging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain is to provide secure, tamper-proof, and immutable audit trails for critical information transactions, decisions, and approvals. This technology creates a decentralized ledger of information exchanges that cannot be altered without consensus, which is particularly valuable in complex, multi-party projects where disputes over accountability might arise. This ensures an immutable record, enhancing the verifiability of information.

The Golden Thread framework supports exploring the benefits of decentralized and federated information management approaches over purely centralized systems. While centralized systems can offer simplicity, they also introduce risks like data bottlenecks and reliance on a single entity. Decentralized models, often enabled by DLT and federated CDEs, allow project data to be shared transparently across stakeholders while maintaining individual control, which better aligns with the fragmented nature of the AEC sector and enhances resilience and trustworthiness.

Part 3: HOW – Operationalizing the Golden Thread: Practical Implementation

This section details the practical steps, methodologies, systems, and cultural considerations required to embed the Golden Thread effectively into real-world projects and organizational practices.

3.1 PEOPLE: Aligning Teams, Cultivating a Culture of Responsibility, and Ensuring Competence

Assigning Clear Accountability: To operationalize the Golden Thread, it’s crucial to clearly assign accountability by establishing and communicating roles and responsibilities for information creation, management, and approval. ISO 19650 emphasizes defining who does what, when, and why in the information process, establishing clear accountability between the Appointing Party, Lead Appointed Parties, and Appointed Task Teams. This can be achieved using tools like Responsibility Matrices (e.g., the RACI model – Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) to prevent diffusion of responsibility and ensure unambiguous ownership for information deliverables.

Emphasizing Professional Responsibility: It must be emphasized that the Golden Thread’s integrity relies on human professional commitment and accountability; systems and tools manage workflows, but only humans can be held ethically and legally accountable for the information they approve or submit. In a safety-critical industry, phrases like “I didn’t realise it was my job” are not a defence, especially when failure results in injury, loss, or death. Clear, documented roles are the bedrock of both compliance and collaboration.

Ensuring Competence: Continuous professional development is essential, involving investment in education, skills training, and competency development for all stakeholders involved in structured information management. Professionals must be equipped with the knowledge and skills to effectively use digital tools, understand information standards, and adhere to defined processes. This ensures they can meet the competency requirements increasingly mandated by regulations and industry best practices.

The Role of Information Managers: The role of competent information managers is vital in driving structured decision-making, overseeing information processes, and ensuring compliance with information requirements. These individuals or teams act as stewards of the information, guiding projects in the correct application of standards and protocols. Their leadership is key to preventing information management from becoming an administrative oversight, especially when failures can have severe consequences.

Embedding a Continuous Improvement Culture: Building and embedding a continuous-improvement culture is fundamental to the long-term success of the Golden Thread. This involves actively creating feedback loops where learning, adaptation, and refinement of information processes are part of the daily rhythm of project delivery. Using the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle as a mindset, teams can systematically review their performance, identify areas for improvement, and implement changes to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their information management practices.

3.2 PROCESS: Practical Steps for Structured Information Delivery, Management, and Governance

A Defining Information Requirements (Start with the End in Mind): Effective information management begins with purpose, by systematically developing clear Organisational Information Requirements (OIRs), Asset Information Requirements (AIRs), capital Project Information Requirements (PIRs), and contractual Exchange Information Requirements (EIRs). These documented expectations define what information the client or appointing party needs, why they need it, and when it must be delivered, ensuring alignment with intended outcomes. This proactive clarity is essential to prevent delays, confusion, and risks associated with incorrect or incomplete information. To shape an effective EIR and ensure all necessary information is captured, it’s crucial to systematically answer “The 5 W’s of planning”. These are:

• Who is responsible for producing and approving each information deliverable?;
• What information is needed (models, drawings, specifications, reports), in what format, and to what level of detail?;
• Why is it required (for which decision, risk, or compliance obligation)?;
• When is it needed (at what date, stage, milestone, or handover point)?; and
• Where will it be stored, managed, reviewed, and accepted (within which system or CDE state)?.

Addressing these questions with care forms the foundation of the project’s information strategy, preventing assumptions and misaligned expectations.

Structured Delivery Planning (BEP, TIDP, MIDP): The delivery team develops the BIM Execution Plan (BEP) as its formal response to the client’s Exchange Information Requirements (EIR), outlining the agreed strategy, standards, methods, procedures, and resources that will govern how information is managed, validated, and exchanged. The BEP ensures that all parties understand how the project’s information goals will be practically achieved. It is a critical document for aligning expectations and defining the practicalities of information production and delivery.

Based on the BEP, each task team then develops a Task Information Delivery Plan (TIDP) that defines its specific deliverables, such as models, drawings, specifications, schedules, and reports. The TIDP details formats, delivery dates, and the contributors responsible for each piece of information. This granular planning at the task team level ensures clarity on individual responsibilities and outputs. These individual TIDPs are subsequently aggregated into the Master Information Delivery Plan (MIDP), which forms a single, coordinated roadmap for all project information delivery. The MIDP functions as the information equivalent of a construction programme, aligning information delivery with project milestones, regulatory deadlines, and key decision points. Crucially, the MIDP must remain a live document, updated as the project evolves, to prevent duplication, avoid surprises, and ensure timely and purposeful delivery of information.

Common Data Environment (CDE) Management: The Common Data Environment (CDE) is the coordinating backbone of the golden thread, enabling structured information to be curated, reviewed, approved, and published according to defined workflows and responsibilities. ISO 19650 outlines a progression of information states within the CDE – such as Work in Progress (WIP), approved for Sharing, reviewed and accepted for Publication, and finally Archived – each representing a specific level of maturity, completeness, and authorization. These states are not arbitrary labels; they critically define when information can be relied upon for decision-making. Effective CDE management requires robust governance, especially since project data often resides across multiple platforms rather than a single system. The goal is not necessarily centralization but interoperable coordination, ensuring these systems support a coherent, traceable, and auditable flow of information. CDE governance involves planning not only what will be exchanged but also how it will be transferred, versioned, reviewed, and accepted, ensuring data arrives in the right place, in the right state, with the right metadata, and under the right authority.

Information Quality Control (Check, Verify, Validate): To ensure the trustworthiness of the Golden Thread, a proactive information quality management approach, anchored in the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle (established by ISO 9001), should be implemented. Within this framework, every information deliverable should pass through three essential quality gates before being used or passed on. These gates are crucial for transforming information from a generic output into a professionally dependable input. The three quality gates are:

• Checking, which confirms that information exists, is correctly structured (e.g., complies with templates and naming conventions), and includes the required metadata;
• Verification, which goes deeper to ensure the work has been executed correctly and meets technical standards, typically conducted by the authoring team; and
• Validation, which determines whether the information is suitable for its intended purpose, often carried out by both the responsible authoring party and the receiving party (e.g., client, contractor, or regulator).

These steps are not redundant overheads but thresholds of trust. In addition to these gates, maintaining high information quality requires careful attention to six interrelated dimensions throughout the project lifecycle. These are:

• Data Continuity (ensuring data flows between stages and changes are traceable);
• Data Compliance (confirming information meets contractual, regulatory, and project standards);
• Data Completeness (ensuring information is sufficiently detailed and contextually appropriate);
• Data Veracity (checking for factual and technical accuracy);
• Data Consistency (maintaining alignment across different data types like models and documents); and
• Data Coordination (ensuring interdisciplinary inputs are aligned, integrated, and clash-free).

Together, these checks ensure information is fit for purpose, trustworthy, and actionable.

Governance and Traceability (Ensuring Long-Term Integrity): Robust information governance and traceability are essential for maintaining the integrity of the Golden Thread over time, as AEC information forms a long-term record for compliance, accountability, and risk management that must live with the physical asset across its lifecycle. This involves implementing comprehensive metadata strategies, strict version control, auditable digital trails of all changes and approvals, and formal digital sign-offs. Just as food or medicine needs to be traceable, every design, drawing, or certificate must be traceable to its source, purpose, and approval history. ISO 19650 emphasizes that information must not only be well-structured but also attributable (linked to a responsible source), attestable (formally declared as accurate and complete by a responsible party), auditable (capable of being examined to verify its history and integrity), and governable throughout its lifecycle.

Governance is not just about storing records; it’s about preserving the chain of custody and ensuring that information can be trusted and defended years later. While software can track workflows, human responsibility is paramount, as algorithms cannot be cross-examined in court. As digital maturity increases, more advanced methods are being explored to enhance governance and traceability, such as structured decision-making models like Toulmin’s framework, Goal Structuring Notation (GSN), and Claims-Argument-Evidence (CAE) to document and trace design rationale. Standards like Decision Modelling Notation (DMN) offer potential for automating rule-based compliance checks, while digital signatures and attestation frameworks help enforce legal responsibility in a verifiable way. In high-risk sectors, lifecycle safety cases provide a powerful template for structured assurance across design, construction, and operations.

3.3 TECNOLOGY: Leveraging Tools for Operational Excellence, Collaboration, and Future Readiness

The Common Data Environment (CDE) serves as the central, interoperable coordinating backbone for the Golden Thread, enabling structured information flow, collaboration, and management across diverse platforms and among various stakeholders. A well-managed CDE enables information to be curated, reviewed, approved, and published according to defined workflows and responsibilities, ensuring an auditable history of who created or approved what, when, and why. It aims to eliminate duplication, resolve version conflicts, and make the status of each data item unambiguous.

Practical application of advanced digital tools is key to enhancing information management within the Golden Thread framework. Workflow automation within CDEs can streamline review, approval, and compliance checking processes, reducing manual effort and improving consistency. Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) offers cryptographic verification of data integrity, providing tamper-evident audit trails for critical information exchanges and approvals. Furthermore, digital attestation frameworks and digital signatures ensure legal accountability and provide verifiable, tamper-proof evidence of responsibility for submitted or approved information.

The integration of advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers significant potential for operational excellence within the Golden Thread. AI can be used for predictive maintenance by analyzing building data to identify components at risk of failure, and for automating compliance validation by checking large datasets against predefined rules and standards. AI can also support proactive risk management by identifying patterns and trends that might indicate potential issues, transforming raw data into actionable insights. However, the effectiveness of AI is critically dependent on the quality of the underlying information – “Garbage-In = Garbage Out” (GIGO).

It is crucial that the systems and processes established for the Golden Thread are future-ready, designed to seamlessly integrate with and leverage emerging technological advancements. This includes preparing the information ecosystem to support full lifecycle Digital Twins, which require a continuous flow of high-quality, structured data for their creation and operation. Similarly, developing Smart Infrastructure and Smart City applications will rely heavily on the robust, trustworthy, and accessible information foundation provided by a well-implemented Golden Thread.

Conclusion

Reinforcing the Golden Thread as a vital discipline for the AEC industry, essential for ensuring safety, transparency, regulatory compliance, and operational excellence. The Golden Thread should be understood not merely as a technical artifact or a theoretical ideal, but as a professional commitment rooted in structure, transparency, accountability, and integrity. Its purpose is not to digitize bureaucracy or simply generate more data, but to enable better decisions backed by trusted information across the full lifecycle of the built environment. This approach transforms information from a passive record into an active safeguard.

Emphasizing that successful Golden Thread implementation requires a holistic and integrated approach, harmonizing three critical elements:

• People (fostering the right culture, ensuring competence, and defining clear responsibilities),
• Process (implementing robust standards, workflows, and governance mechanisms), and
• Technology (leveraging appropriate tools, platforms, and data strategies to support the people and processes).

This synergy is essential for achieving the desired outcomes of safety, compliance, and efficiency.

A Call to Action for Industry-Wide Adoption

This article aims to encourage proactive engagement from all AEC professionals, organizations, and stakeholders in building a resilient, trusted, and accountable information ecosystem. By committing to these practices, the AEC sector can build a future where information is continuously accessible, reliable, and actionable. To move forward, organizations could start by conducting an information management audit to understand their current capabilities and gaps, or explore ISO 19650 training to build foundational knowledge for implementing the Golden Thread effectively, to learn how your organization can begin or advance its journey towards embedding these principles to enhance project outcomes and build a more resilient future for the built environment.

About the Author

Ralph Montague BArch MRIAI is an architect and a director at ArcDox BIM Consultants. He has over 30 years of experience in the AEC industry and specializes in advising individuals, businesses, and project teams on information management practices and the implementation of BIM standards, particularly ISO 19650. Ralph has been actively involved in shaping industry standards and practices through his membership of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI), the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) Technical Mirror Committee for BIM Standards, including past roles as RIAI representative to the Architects Council of Europe (ACE) BIM Working Group, and director of the Construction IT Alliance (CITA). He is co-founder of the BIM Coordinators Summit and the international BIM Heroes Community, platforms dedicated to advancing knowledge and collaboration in digital construction. He can be reached via www.ArcDox.com and www.BIMhero.io

Glossary of Key Terms and Acronyms

AI (Artificial Intelligence): Technology that enables computer systems to perform tasks typically requiring human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. In the context of the Golden Thread, AI can be used for data analysis, compliance checks, and risk identification.

AIR (Asset Information Requirements): Documented expectations defining what information the client or appointing party needs about their asset, why they need it, and when it must be delivered, particularly for the operational phase.

BEP (BIM Execution Plan): The delivery team’s formal response to the client’s Exchange Information Requirements (EIR), outlining the agreed strategy, standards, methods, procedures, and resources for information management.

BIM (Building Information Modelling): A process for creating and managing information on a construction project across the project lifecycle, involving generating and managing digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of buildings or infrastructure assets.

CAE (Claims-Argument-Evidence): A structured decision model used to justify and trace design rationale by linking claims to supporting arguments and evidence.

CDE (Common Data Environment): A digital space (or interconnected/federated set of spaces) acting as a single source of information for a project or asset, used to collect, manage, and disseminate documentation, graphical models, and non-graphical data for the whole project team.

DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology): A digital system for recording transactions of assets in which the transactions and their details are recorded in multiple places at the same time (e.g., blockchain). It enhances transparency and creates tamper-evident audit trails.

DMN (Decision Modelling Notation): A standard for modelling and executing decisions that are based on business rules, offering potential for automating compliance checks.

EIR (Exchange Information Requirements): Contractual documented expectations defining what specific information the client or appointing party needs from the delivery team at specific points in the project, why they need it, and in what format.

Golden Thread: A continuous, verified, and accessible flow of information across the entire lifecycle of a built asset, ensuring accurate and timely data is available to the right people.

GSN (Goal Structuring Notation): A graphical argumentation notation used to explicitly represent the individual elements of any argument and the relationships between these elements.

ISO 19650 series: An international 6-part series of standards for managing information over the whole life cycle of a built asset using building information modelling (BIM).

MIDP (Master Information Delivery Plan): A single coordinated roadmap aggregating all Task Information Delivery Plans (TIDPs) for a project, aligning information delivery with project milestones, regulatory deadlines, and decision points.

OIR (Organisational Information Requirements): Documented expectations defining what information an organization needs to achieve its strategic objectives.

PDCA (Plan–Do–Check–Act): An iterative four-step management method used for the control and continuous improvement of processes and products (also known as the Deming cycle or Shewhart cycle).

PIR (Project Information Requirements): Documented expectations defining what information the client or appointing party needs for specific project outcomes, why they need it, and when it must be delivered for the capital/delivery phase.

RACI Model (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed): A responsibility assignment matrix used to clarify roles and responsibilities in projects and processes by identifying who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for tasks.

TIDP (Task Information Delivery Plan): A plan developed by each task team defining its specific information deliverables, including formats, dates, and contributors, based on the BIM Execution Plan (BEP).

UK BSA (UK Building Safety Act): Legislation in the United Kingdom enacted following the Grenfell Tower disaster, aimed at improving building safety, particularly for high-risk buildings, and mandating stricter information management, including the Golden Thread.

WIP (Work in Progress): An information state within a Common Data Environment (CDE) representing information that is currently being developed by a task team and is not yet approved for sharing with other parties.