As required in the ‘Roadmap to Digital Transition for Ireland’s Construction Industry 2018-2021’ the NSAI is to deliver a National BIM Certification scheme.
NSAI’s BIM Certification scheme
With the publication of IS EN ISO 19650 parts 1 and 2 by ISO and CEN and adopted by NSAI as an Irish Standard we now have a truly international standard for Building Information Modelling (BIM) for both the Irish Construction Industry to adopt and follow and for asset owners to reply for real time asset information. The benefits of BIM are well established and published through the work of organisations such as CitA, BIMIreland.ie, RIAI, Engineers Ireland and others over the past number of years.
In addition, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation Heather Humphries states in the foreword to the National BIM Council’s ‘Roadmap to Digital Transition for Ireland’s Construction Industry 2018-2021’ that “The convergence of the EU BIM Task Group handbook release, the Government mandate and the NBC roadmap present Ireland with an opportunity to become leaders in industry adoption of BIM – implementing common standards and guidelines into common practice.” The same Roadmap calls on NSAI to deliver a National BIM certification scheme by Q4 2018.
The NSAI are now able to offer third party certification to IS EN ISO 19650 part 2. NSAI have recently completed auditor exam-based training for its team of construction/engineering services management systems auditors to BIM, primarily provided by BRE (UK). Several pilot audits have been undertaken with organisations who have adopted BIM in their practice and or construction activity. An extensive ‘BIM Self-Assessment Questionnaire Checklist’ has been completed and updated resulting from learnings at the pilot stage and comment from members of the NSAI BIM industry-based standards committee. This questionnaire together with an information sheet will be available on the NSAI website at NSAI.ie for free download and use by industry.
Steps to third party Certification
The certifications scheme is offered to three main categories of organisations: Employers, Designers and Contractors. All applicants must be able to demonstrate that they comply with the appropriate duties and responsibilities for their activities as set out in ISO 19650. An Organisation may apply for one, two or all three roles providing they can demonstrate application as appropriate.
The audit process will broadly follow other similar management system certifications with a stage 1 and 2 registration process followed by annual surveillance and three-year reassessment.
An applicant organisation does not have to already hold ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management system certification, however for organisations that do not have ISO 9001, they are required to complete an additional systems requirement in section ‘C’ of the self-assessment questionnaire.
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