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Reimagining AEC is Dr Sepehr Abrishami's independent podcast on how the built environment handles information. Each episode takes one subject from digital construction, from the ISO 19650 series and the common data environment to the golden thread, soft landings and the arrival of artificial intelligence in design and surveying practice, and tells it as a single argument built on the published standards, guidance and evidence. Sepehr is a researcher and former architect who leads the Centre for AI in Construction and teaches building information modelling at master's level. The episodes are written for postgraduate students and practitioners who want the reasoning behind the rules, not a summary of them.
Information management on a project divides into a long list of separate tasks. This podcast, Reimagining AEC, is hosted by the researcher who built a framework of the same name, and I am that researcher, Dr Sepehr Abrishami. Each of the framework's twelve branches, building information modelling, or BIM, among them, depends on someone being given those tasks. This episode is about the plain grid in which a project assigns them, the information management assignment matrix. It answers a question that no software answers for you, which is who on a project does each piece of information management work and who answers for it.
When I went through the UK template for this matrix row by row, I counted one hundred and thirty separate tasks. They sit under forty-three activities, which follow the eight stages of the information management process in ISO 19650-2, the international standard for information management during the design and construction of an asset. Every one of those tasks has to settle four questions, even where the answer to some of them is nobody: who does it, who answers for it, who must be asked and who must be told. Leave a task with no one to do it or answer for it, and an information exchange can be missed on a project with excellent software, simply because nobody was given the task.
That gives this episode its question, which is how a project settles those four questions for every task it has. I will test the answer on one ordinary task, which the template numbers six point four point one. Before a task team shares an information container in the common data environment, somebody reviews the information inside that container. By the end you should be able to explain why ISO 19650-2 requires the information management function to be assigned at all, tell the four allocations apart and apply the rule that only one party answers for any task, read the template along its rows and across its columns, and then complete, agree and cascade a matrix for a real appointment.
I will take it in four steps: why the function has to be assigned and what the four letters mean, how a row of the template is built and where the template stops, what is fixed and how parties agree the rest, and finally task six point four point one, followed from the project level down into a building services subcontractor.
The first step starts from the standard. The UK guidance on the information management function, Guidance Part A of the UK BIM Framework, in its second edition of February 2021, describes that function as the collective responsibility and authority for the whole information management process in ISO 19650-2. Two clauses make the assignment compulsory. Clause five point one point one makes the appointing party, the client, assign the function across the project. Clause five point three point one asks each lead appointed party to do the same within its own delivery team. Every activity therefore needs an owner, and leaving it to whoever happens to own the software is not an assignment.
The matrix reaches a project through three layers, each more particular than the one above it. At the top sits Annex A of ISO 19650-2, which summarises the activities of the clauses in RACI form, where RACI stands for responsible, accountable, consulted and informed. In February 2021 the UK BIM Framework expanded that summary into a template, splitting each activity into tasks. At the bottom, each organisation adapts the template to its own people, and the guidance is clear that this more detailed matrix is optional, not a requirement of ISO 19650 itself. In 2025 the UK BIM Framework was renamed the IMI Framework, after the Information Management Initiative, and nima, formerly the UK BIM Alliance, maintains it with the British Standards Institution. The template is still offered there as a current resource, in Word, Excel and Airtable formats, although the 2021 guidance that introduced it is now archived.
Four letters fill the template, and accountable is the one to learn first. The accountable organisation is ultimately answerable for an activity. It holds yes or no authority and a power of veto, and only one organisation can hold that letter for any activity. The responsible organisation completes the work. Responsibility can be delegated to another party or to a third party, but accountability stays with the party the clause names. The other two letters differ by timing. A consulted party gives input while the task is under way, and an informed party is told once it is complete. In the template itself, every task carries A and R together, so the party that answers for a task also does it. The two letters separate only when an organisation cascades its rows to its own people. So the first step resolves simply. The standard requires an owner for every activity, and the four letters say what kind of ownership each party holds.
The second step reads one row. The template runs through the eight stages, one row per task. Each row opens with an identifier on three levels. In task six point four point one, the six is the stage, the collaborative production of information. Six point four is the activity, reviewing information and approving it for sharing. The final one is the task, the review itself. Next comes the source, which ties the task to its clause, here clause five point six point four of ISO 19650-2. Where good practice adds a task the standard does not name, the source reads not applicable. Then come the party columns, for the appointing party, the lead appointed party and the appointed party. Two optional columns sit beside them for a third party engaged by the appointing party or by a lead appointed party, and the template ships with both empty. For our task, the appointed party carries A and R, and the lead appointed party is informed.
The template goes further than the clauses in three directions, and the principle behind all three is that work the project needs must be assigned whether or not a clause names it. The first is security. Six tasks come from ISO 19650-5, the security-minded part of the ISO 19650 family, and all six sit with the appointing party. They run from assessing security risks and carrying out the security triage, through a security strategy and management plan where the triage calls for them, to an information sharing agreement within the tender response requirements. The second is the information protocol, where the client completes the information particulars in the UK BIM Framework's protocol template, now in its sixth edition of 2023. Information protocols have an episode of their own. The third is a set of fifteen practical tasks with no clause behind them. Checking and evaluating tender responses is one, and the guidance notes that tender review is not covered by the clauses but is still needed to reach an appointment. Chairing a lessons learned workshop is another.
The template also stops short in one place. It keeps only three general rows for generating information. The detailed tasks under clause five point six point two, such as producing models and drawings, belong in the responsibility matrices and delivery plans, which the episode on information delivery planning covers. That boundary resolves the second step. The assignment matrix governs the management of information, and the responsibility matrices govern the deliverables. Producing a model is a deliverable. Reviewing it before it is shared, our task six point four point one, is information management.
The third step turns to filling the matrix in, and it rests on one contrast. Accountability is fixed. The guidance states that the A follows the shall clauses of ISO 19650-2, the requirements the standard states with the word shall, and should not be changed. If the standard says the appointing party shall establish its exchange information requirements, the A for that task stays with the appointing party, whoever drafts the document. Everything else can move. A project can give responsibility to a third party, add the consultees it needs, and expand a row into subtasks with roles or names. A lead appointed party can also strip out other parties' tasks to keep an internal version. So when parties sit down to agree a matrix, the discussion is only ever about R, C and I.
The order of agreement follows the chain of appointments. The appointing party goes first and completes the matrix before it engages any lead appointed party, because the guidance treats a clearly assigned function as critical at that point. Rows it hands to a lead appointed party or to a third party become part of that party's scope of services, and Guidance Part 2 of the UK BIM Framework, the fifth edition of 2020, on the delivery phase, asks for the appointment to reflect them. Each lead appointed party then cascades its own rows to the people in its delivery team. Next, the parties check that their matrices join up, so that no task falls between two organisations. Finally, the matrices are updated as the delivery phase moves on, and the guidance accepts that scheduling tasks and agreeing responsibility takes time and effort. One caution on probity belongs here, and the episode on the information management function treats it in full. That delivery phase guidance suggests that an individual carrying out the appointing party's function should not also carry out a lead appointed party's own function. The third step therefore leaves the A where the clauses put it and gives the parties their say over everything else.
The fourth step puts this to work, starting at project level, where the useful habit is to watch the A travel down the template. The A begins with the client. Task one point one point one, appointing the individuals who will undertake the information management function, sits wholly with the appointing party. Through tender and planning the A moves to the lead appointed party, which owns its pre-appointment BIM execution plan, task three point two point one. Task four point five point four, reporting risks that could affect the delivery milestones, shows all three parties in one row. The lead appointed party answers for it and does it, its appointed parties are consulted, and the appointing party is informed. In production the A reaches the appointed parties, and task six point four point one is the example, with the lead appointed party told once the review is done. At acceptance and close-out the A returns to the client, which arranges and chairs the lessons learned workshop, task eight point two point one.
Now go inside an appointed party. The guidance gives the example of a building services subcontractor working for a main contractor, and it expands task six point four point one for that firm's own people. To make it concrete, say the firm's mechanical engineer has just finished a model of the ductwork in a plant room. The plant room is my own detail, while the roles and their letters come from the guidance. In the subcontractor's matrix, the design manager is accountable and also responsible. The mechanical and electrical engineers carry out the review, so they are responsible too. The computer-aided design technicians, the BIM specialist and the supply chain task teams are consulted. The main contractor is informed, exactly as the template requires, and so are colleagues who need to know the review is done, such as the quantity surveyor and the document controller.
Notice what the cascade has done. The single A in the template has become one named role, the design manager, while the R now reaches two engineers as well. A and R have started to separate, which the template alone never shows. The same example draws one more line. Just before the review comes task six point three point one, a quality assurance check of each container against the project's information production methods and procedures, and it sits with the document controller. Checking a container's form and reviewing its content are different jobs, and the matrix gives them to different people. In the plant room case, the document controller checks the ductwork container against those procedures before the engineers and the design manager judge what it contains.
That brings the episode to its answer, which comes at two levels. At project level, the appointing party fixes accountability from the shall clauses and agrees with the lead appointed parties who is responsible, who is consulted and who is informed. Inside each organisation, the rows are cascaded to real roles, as the ductwork review showed when one A became a design manager and the R spread to two engineers.
For your own appointments, three things follow. Fix accountability first, from the shall clauses, with one accountable party for each task, and expect every later discussion to be about the other three letters. Cascade your own rows to named roles, then agree the result with the other parties, check that it joins up and keep it current. Keep the boundary in view, because the matrix assigns the management of information, while the responsibility matrices and delivery plans assign the deliverables.
One note on currency. The template is keyed to the clause numbers of the 2018 edition of ISO 19650-2, and revised drafts of ISO 19650 Parts 1 and 2 went to UK public comment between March and May 2026, so check the clause references when new editions are published. For reading, start with the template itself and section one point eight of Guidance Part A, then try completing five rows for a project you know. The episode on the information management function goes further into delegation and probity, and the episode on information delivery planning picks up the deliverables the matrix leaves out.
My advice as Dr Sepehr Abrishami, host of Reimagining AEC, is to read the matrix on any project you work on or study slowly, row by row.