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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.
A contractor's tender sets out what it offers, and its appointment sets out what it must do. I am Dr Sepehr Abrishami, and before I moved into research I founded my own architectural design office. Reimagining AEC is made apart from any employer, and in this episode I look past the bid to the point where a contractor becomes bound to produce information in an agreed way, using building information modelling, or BIM.
Take a client choosing between two tenders for a construction contract. No real project sits behind this case, which I assembled from the steps the UK guidance describes. The client scores one main contractor higher, mainly because its BIM execution plan, or BEP, the document in which a delivery team sets out how it will manage information, is the stronger of the two. During the works, information starts arriving in a form the plan never described. The client looks in the appointment for the clause that obliges the contractor to follow its own plan, and finds none. It must now decide whether to negotiate for what it thought it had already bought or to accept what arrives. Guidance Part E of the UK BIM Framework, on tendering and appointments, published in February 2021, explains the gap. Without an information protocol, the document setting out each party's rights and obligations for information within an appointment, neither party is clearly bound to comply with ISO 19650-2, the international standard for managing information while an asset is designed and built.
That gives this episode its question, which is what has to be in place, and in what order, before a main contractor and the sub-contractors beneath it are bound to manage information the way the client needs.
Part E has dated in places. nima, formerly the UK BIM Alliance, now runs the framework as the IMI Framework, short for Information Management Initiative, and lists Part E among its archived documents, so where the guidance has moved on I will give you the current position. The running example is the guidance's own. The client tenders the construction contract to a main contractor, which later appoints a steelwork sub-contractor. In the language of ISO 19650, the client is the appointing party. The main contractor is a lead appointed party, appointed directly by the client and leading a delivery team made up of itself and the parties it appoints. The steelwork sub-contractor is an appointed party within that team.
By the end you should be able to explain what the client issues at tender and how it judges bidders, and to use clause five point three point two of ISO 19650-2 to structure a BEP written to win work. You should also be able to say why some changes to a project's information standard are easier to accept than others, and how the BEP and the protocol become binding. I will take four steps: the route from invitation to appointment, the BEP at tender, the information standard every team shares, and the acts that make it all binding.
The first step is the route itself, because each document belongs to a particular party and a particular clause. ISO 19650-2 sets out eight activities, and the first four take a project from set-up to a signed appointment. In the first, under clause five point one, the client works at project level. It establishes the project's information requirements, its information standard, its information production methods and procedures, its reference information and its information protocol. The information standard is the set of rules for how information is structured, classified and exchanged, and the methods and procedures describe how that information is produced. Each serves every appointment. In the second, under clause five point two, the work narrows to one appointment. The client writes exchange information requirements, or EIR, for that appointment alone, here the construction contract, and issues the invitation to tender. The EIR say what information the client needs from that appointment, to what level and by when.
In the third, under clause five point three, the prospective lead appointed party, our main contractor, returns a pre-appointment BEP with the rest of its tender response. Part E attaches this response to clause five point two in one place, but the standard puts it in clause five point three. In the fourth, clause five point four, the winning proposals become appointment documents. On a two-stage design and build project the same organisation may be appointed twice, and the BEP work is repeated in proportion to what has changed.
Now the invitation. Guidance Part 2 of the UK BIM Framework, on parties, teams and processes for the delivery phase, published in 2020, advises the client under clause five point two point four to combine its information management content with the rest of the tender, such as the technical specification for the works. That content is of two kinds. The first is what the client needs, the EIR, with exchange dates tied to the project's information delivery milestones, the points at which information falls due for the client's decisions. The second is the rules and resources the tenderer must work within: the information standard, the methods and procedures, the information protocol, and access to reference information and shared resources through the common data environment, or CDE, the agreed source where the project's information is collected, managed and shared. A statement of what the response must contain completes the package.
The client also decides how it will judge the responses, and under clause five point two point three it does so before it issues anything. Guidance Part 2 names four considerations, and they divide along one line. One is the content of the pre-appointment BEP, the plan itself. The other three test whether the team can deliver it: its competency, capability and capacity, how it will be mobilised, and how it will handle information delivery risk. The guidance recommends questions specific to the appointment and measurable criteria, so that every bidder is scored the same way. The first step resolves simply. The client fixes the terms of the competition and the rules of scoring together, and the tenderer's main answer to both is its BEP.
That brings us to the second step. Under ISO 19650-2 there is only one BEP for each delivery team, but it passes through two versions. The pre-appointment BEP comes from clause five point three point two and is written in the tender response. The delivery team's BEP comes from clause five point four point one and is settled before the contract is signed. Part E draws attention to the wording. Clause five point three point two says what the tenderer shall consider, while clause five point four point one says what the lead appointed party shall do. The first version is evidence that the prospective team can manage information in line with the requirements it was given. The second is a working tool for producing, managing and exchanging information through the appointment, and as an appointment document every later change to it goes through formal change control.
Under PAS 1192-2, the Publicly Available Specification of 2013, now withdrawn and history only, the BEP was one document that also held capability, mobilisation and risk content. ISO 19650-2 makes these separate resources, which keeps the BEP succinct. How the tenderer starts depends on the client. The client may issue a BEP template as a shared resource under clause five point one point six, or list the headings its evaluation will look for under clause five point two point three, and either lets it compare teams on equal terms. If the client says nothing, the tenderer works from clause five point three point two alone. If the client issues no EIR at all, which departs from the standard, Part E advises a BEP that anticipates the EIR, to give the project a chance of a good outcome, and a plain warning to the client that the project is not following ISO 19650, so that the two parties can resolve it together.
Whichever route applies, clause five point three point two sets the content, and its seven matters answer three questions. The first is who will manage information and how. The BEP names the individuals who will undertake the information management function, meaning the information management tasks the team must carry out, which assures the client of their competence and prompts early thought about resourcing. It sets out an information delivery strategy that responds to each requirement in the EIR, with its level of information need, meaning how much information each purpose requires, its acceptance criteria and its dates, and describes the team's goals, structure and task teams, the groups that carry out each part of the work. The second question is who will produce what. The federation strategy explains how the information model is divided and recombined, and the high-level responsibility matrix names, for each element of the model, the deliverable and the party responsible. Part E's example is the cost model, with order of cost estimates and cost plans as deliverables and the prospective quantity surveyor as the responsible party. The third question is what the team would change and what it will use. The BEP may propose changes to the methods and procedures and to the information standard, and it lists the software, hardware and IT, meaning information technology, that the team will use, which Part E treats as fundamental to interoperability.
The rest of the response shows that the team can do what the plan says. Under clause five point three point three, each prospective task team assesses its capability and capacity to manage information, to produce it, and in the IT it has available. If our steelwork sub-contractor is known at tender, it would ask, in the spirit of Guidance Part 2's examples, whether its staff have used the software the delivery strategy names and whether they can follow the project's naming conventions. Task teams can also seek independent certification as evidence. The main contractor draws these assessments into a view of the whole delivery team. A mobilisation plan explains how people, software and the CDE will be made ready and tested before production starts. A risk register records information delivery risk, and Guidance Part 2 recommends one integrated register rather than a separate list inside the BEP. The individuals named in the BEP were nominated earlier, under clause five point three point one, and everything is compiled into one response under clause five point three point seven. At tender, then, the BEP is evidence offered for scoring, with separate resources showing capability, readiness and risk.
The third step is the information standard. Part E gives it a full chapter, as the one technical resource every delivery team on the project shares, so a weakness in it spreads into every appointment. Its place is easiest to follow from the top down. At the top are the client's own organisational standards, methods and procedures. Below them sits the project information standard, established by the client under clause five point one point four. It must stay consistent with those organisational standards, so that what is delivered remains usable across the asset's life. Part E describes its purpose as providing the standards against which information is produced and then maintained. Next, the standard is written once but enters the appointment documents of every lead appointed party, and through them every sub-consultant and sub-contractor, which is how our main contractor and steelwork sub-contractor produce information consistently with every other team, whatever their contractual relationship. At the bottom, it becomes the basis for maintaining information through the asset's whole life.
Part E says the standard should cover how information is structured, classified and exchanged, written in full or referenced from an external source such as a British Standard. Its contents fall into two groups. The first makes information identifiable and comparable. The UK National Annex to ISO 19650-2, revised in 2021, recommends that the information standard holds the permitted values for the information container identifier, the unique reference given to each file or other container of information, and for status and revision codes. So the standard sets the project identifier and the originator codes, including the one the steelwork sub-contractor will use when it joins. The same group covers the level of information need framework, which today means ISO 7817-1 of 2024, the standard that replaced BS EN 17412-1 of 2020, the classification system and where it applies, and the rules for designating internal and external spaces. The second group concerns the document itself. Part E asks at least for a clause-based structure that anyone can reference, with a header following ISO 7200, which lists fields such as title, author and approver. For a fuller structure it pointed to a technical specification numbered 12911, since withdrawn, and the current standard under that number is ISO 12911 of 2023, a framework for specifying BIM implementation.
The standard has one distinctive feature at tender. A prospective lead appointed party can propose changes to it through its BEP, and Part E separates two kinds. Additions are generally welcome where clearly justified, because the standard was written around the client and any teams appointed earlier, not necessarily around an incoming team. Part E's example is a room and space referencing system, and as an illustration, our main contractor might propose one if the client's standard said nothing about it. Amendments need more care, because other delivery teams may already be producing information to the current version. Change a rule part way through and new information can conflict with what came before, leaving the client with inconsistent asset information. Either way, Part E asks that the proposal is handled as a contract negotiation and made known to all bidders, so that the tender stays fair and transparent, and once agreed the change is written into the project-wide standard. The third step resolves in one contrast. An addition extends the client's single standard safely, while an amendment risks leaving the project with information produced to two different rules.
That leaves the fourth step, and the problem the episode opened on. A good BEP and a sound standard bind no one on their own. Two acts do that, confirming the BEP and incorporating the information protocol. Between the client naming its preferred tenderer and the contract being signed, the BEP is revisited under clause five point four point one, in five moves. The main contractor revisits the tender version, reviewing how it presents the information standard, the methods and procedures and the federation strategy. It updates the BEP to confirm the named individuals for the information management function and the schedule of software, hardware and IT, and, where needed, the delivery strategy and the high-level responsibility matrix, because time may have passed during the tender, the contract type may have settled, or the task teams may have changed. It aligns the documents, so that agreed changes go into the project-wide standard and the federation strategy supports the detailed responsibility matrix, which sets out who produces each piece of information, and the master information delivery plan, or MIDP, the plan for when that information will be delivered across the delivery team. It confirms the BEP with the client under clause five point four point six, and with each appointed party, including the steelwork sub-contractor, under clause five point four point seven. From then on it is maintained under change control as more parties join.
Confirmation still does not create the obligation. That comes from the information protocol, which, as I said at the start, sets out each party's rights and obligations for information within an appointment. The client establishes it under clause five point one point eight and carries it into tenders and appointments under clauses five point two point four, five point four point six and five point four point seven. Part E describes five activities. Two happen once per project. The client obtains the UK template for the delivery phase, published by the UK BIM Framework with the Construction Industry Council and now in its sixth edition, of July 2023. It then completes the Information Particulars, on the protocol's front page, with project details such as the identity of the information standard, the methods and procedures and the EIR. The protocol also carries security provisions, because ISO 19650-5 of 2020, on a security-minded approach to information management, expects provision for them in every appointment. The other three activities repeat for every tender and appointment. The protocol goes into each tender package, the steelwork package included. During appointment, the particulars gain the appointee's details, such as its BEP or its task information delivery plan, or TIDP, the plan for what one task team will deliver and when. Last, an incorporation clause gives the protocol contractual effect, with the completed protocol appended, for example as a schedule. A template for the operational phase, still under review when Part E appeared, is now in its second edition, also of July 2023.
Part E ends its protocol chapter with the points where this chain can break, and they follow two principles. The first is that the protocol must exist, be complete and be incorporated. Its absence is the gap from the opening, where the main contractor held a winning plan with no duty attached to it. If the Information Particulars are incomplete, obligations, rights and processes become unclear. Documents that do not apply are marked Not Applicable. The TIDP does not apply between the client and the main contractor, for example, and the mobilisation plan and the MIDP do not apply in the steelwork sub-contract. An unincorporated protocol has no contractual effect at all. The second principle is that a protocol depends on what surrounds it. It is only as effective as the documents it lists, so it cannot make up for a thin information standard, and it has to reach every tier. The template uses the neutral terms Appointor, for the party making an appointment, and Appointee, for the party appointed, so that one document works at any level. If the steelwork sub-contract lacks a protocol, the main contractor may be unable to meet its own obligations, and so be in breach of its contract with the client.
To draw this together, the opening question asked what has to be in place, and in what order, before a main contractor and its sub-contractors are bound to manage information as the client needs. The answer is a chain of documents, each owned by a named party and tied to a clause, and it holds only once its last link is in place. If you are about to prepare or judge a tender, four points follow from this. A client fixes its information management terms and its scoring rules together, before anything is issued, so the criteria should be measurable and known from the start. A pre-appointment BEP is evidence written to be judged, while the confirmed BEP is a working tool under change control, and the two deserve to be read differently. One information standard serves every tier alike, and an addition to it is far easier to accept than an amendment, which needs open negotiation with every bidder. Nothing described here binds anyone until a completed information protocol is incorporated into each appointment.
For reading, start with Guidance Part E in its second edition, alongside Guidance Part 2 and ISO 19650-2 with its 2021 UK National Annex, treating both guidance documents as background now that they are archived. For the protocol, use the current template and the information protocols guidance from the IMI Framework resources. Revised drafts of ISO 19650 Parts 1 and 2 went out for UK public comment between March and May 2026, as nima reported that March, so check clause numbers when new editions appear. The episodes on information requirements, on information delivery planning and on information protocols each take one of these links further.
In my reading, as Dr Sepehr Abrishami, a tender set beside its appointment shows more than either document alone. Try that reading on the next appointment you sign, issue or study, with this episode of Reimagining AEC in mind.