Dame Judith Hackitt to chair ETIM UK discussion on building safety

Dame Judith Hackitt will chair ETIM UK’s panel discussion at Digital Construction Week 2023, highlighting the importance of digitalisation in the drive for building safety. The event takes place on 18 May at London’s ExCeL.

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, Dame Judith conducted an independent review for the government into building regulations and fire safety. Since publishing her final report in 2018 she has continued to press for regulatory change and for an industry culture change. Her recommendations for radical reform of the regulatory system recently received Royal Assent in the Building Safety Act 2022.

ETIM UK’s panel at Digital Construction Week, featuring four senior representatives from across the construction supply chain, will discuss building safety as a driver for digitalisation and the need for standardised product data to enable and accelerate the process.

In every construction project, data needs to pass through a complex network of people and businesses. There are multiple sources, and multiple users, of the same data. Standardised product data is therefore the key to successful digitalisation.

Successful digitalisation requires participation from all stakeholders in the construction process including manufacturers, merchants, distributors and wholesalers.

ETIM is the tried and tested data international standard for structured product data, specifically technical and performance data. It was adopted by the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) in 2019 for building materials, HVAC and plumbing products, having been introduced to the UK’s electrotechnical sector in 2017 by the Electrical Distributors’ Association (EDA).

John Newcomb, CEO at the BMF says, “We are delighted that Dame Judith will host this important discussion to highlight the huge significance that high quality product data has for every step of the supply chain – contractors simply cannot work without it. The Hackitt Report and the Code for Construction Product Information (CCPI) is creating a step-change for building security in the UK and ETIM, because of its focus on a product’s technical performance, has a vital contribution to make in that work.”

Margaret Fitzsimons, CEO at the EDA says, “Everyone in the construction industry agrees that complete, accurate, up-to-date and traceable product information is of vital importance to our sector.  We also agree that the manufacturer is the owner of that data. What is not clear, however, is what format that data should take and how it should move along the value chain efficiently so that it is usable by all players from building concept to demolition. The EDA is working with manufacturers and wholesalers to adopt a standard data model, ETIM, so that data can be shared in their transactions and more widely across the full construction value chain. This standardised data is the gold from which the golden thread is woven and key to building safety.”