As we come up to the halfway point of 2026, ask yourself this question. “How many times this year has my team already measured the same space or inventoried the same assets for different purposes?” And by extension: “what could they have been working on instead?”
It’s not uncommon for FMs to feel they don’t have full control over their own data, and the eternal search for numbers and documentation is a significant source of frustration.
Transitioning from static to accessible
One reason for this is that building information is often difficult to access and use in practice. Traditional drawings can quickly become outdated, and finding the right information frequently depends on knowing where to look and who to ask.
Digitising a building changes this by creating a central, visual source of building information that can be accessed by multiple teams and used across a range of operational processes. Rather than relying on static drawings and figures, facilities managers gain access to an up-to-date digital representation of the building, where spaces, assets and their associated information can be viewed and understood in context.
One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by converting existing building information into a BIM model.
Converting to BIM
When a building is digitalised, in the simplest terms, the old 2D floor plan is replaced with 2D and 3D floor views that have clickable graphic objects. It’s never been easier to do this, using our Plan to BIM services – read more here. Building structural elements, objects and their properties can then be made available in software, like Geminus, both to visualise the information graphically (where the BIM model forms the basis) and as data in an FM system.
An object can be, for example, a door, a pump, a fan or a lift. Taking the fire door as an example, FM teams need to know what its fire class is, who the supplier is, whether it is located in a fire compartment and whether it has automation, in order to information maintenance and fire safety regimes.
How BIM supports maintenance and compliance
Once the systems and assets have been created in the BIM model, it is easy to calculate areas, volumes and numbers. For fire safety compliance and maintenance planning, it is essential to know how many fire doors there are in the building in combination with the registered properties such as fire class, door with automation [Yes/No], door in fire cell boundary [Yes/No] and door in escape route [Yes/No]. These properties make it easy to identify and filter specific door types or environments, ensuring they are linked to the correct checklists for fire compliance inspections.
Assets can also be tagged with whether they are subject to statutory inspection and classify them using a standard classification system such as Uniclass. This makes it possible to quickly identify and filter all assets of a particular type – such as lifts, pressure vessels or air handling units – across a building or portfolio. Using a standard classification also improves consistency in reporting, maintenance planning and compliance management, ensuring that the right assets are included in inspection programmes and linked to the appropriate maintenance processes. This creates a strong foundation for statutory inspections, ongoing compliance and efficient facilities management.
Building a living asset register
The information on the model can and should grow and change with the building. Details can be collected on smartphones or tablets during regular inspections, such as make, model, installation year, manufacturing year and manufacturing number. In this way, FMs build up accurate asset information in the property portfolio on an ongoing basis; eliminating the risk of an outdated or incomplete asset register, which is still an all-too-common pain point for FMs. The model can also be integrated into CAFM software to share the asset register and create PPM schedules across the whole site.
The value of the model extends beyond day-to-day operations. BIM is also extremely useful for informing renovation work. Using the model, users can obtain accurate measurements for the building’s areas for walls, ceilings and floors, as well as the perimeter for various purposes (for example, painting the baseboards, ceiling mouldings, door frames, etc). If contractors are used to carry out the maintenance, the FM team can create ready-made order documents with the correct quantities, time required and price for implementation based on the prices provided for various maintenance efforts.
From searching for information to using it
Facilities teams should not have to spend valuable time repeatedly measuring spaces, searching for drawings or rebuilding asset information. By creating a digital representation of the building and continuously enriching it with operational data, BIM provides a reliable foundation for compliance, maintenance planning and future projects. The result is less time spent looking for information and more time acting on it.
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