Construction Management is the highest circulation construction-based publication serving the UK built environment.
Digital Construction
Environment Agency takes first steps to sharing data to save lives
Justin Stanton Editor, CM Digital
The Environment Agency (EA) has developed the systems, data schema and data exchange tools that will enable risk information to be shared more effectively and efficiently.
These outputs are part of the EA’s Sharing Data, Saving Lives Project and are now being implemented across its estate.
Implementing these changes will make risk information available to all the duty holders on a project to improve design risk management, enhance the interface between the design and construction phases, and to manage handover information and the health and safety file more efficiently.
This is not a paywall. Registration allows us to enhance your experience across Construction Management and ensure we deliver you quality editorial content.
Registering also means you can manage your own CPDs, comments, newsletter sign-ups and privacy settings.
As a client, the EA will be able to access all risk data across relevant project operations and maintenance work and ensure that lessons are identified and learning actioned on a nationwide basis.
According to the EA’s case study (published by Discovering Safety), it was managing risk project-by-project in a document-based manner before this project started. It entered risks on spreadsheets, but only carried out a limited amount of work out to join up these data sets and learn from them. At the client level, it was very difficult to look at anything other than an individual project.
The biggest challenge was the fragmented and inconsistent nature of health and safety risk information between the various systems used by the EA and its supply chain. This fragmentation affects the entire data journey for risk information, from an initial asset appraisal, through the project design and construct lifecycle, to updating the asset operations and maintenance.
At a project level, this creates barriers to easily understanding risks across the various work activities required.
At the programme level, both the EA and its supply chain’s health and safety teams find it hard to use available data to draw wider lessons and insights. This in turn hinders the EA's focus on continually improving how the work of contractors and their own staff is controlled through a project framework.
A standardised data schema
The Sharing Data, Saving Lives project has established a consistent risk data schema. This will enable the EA to record data in a consistent, known and understood format that will allow insights to be gained. The data schema allows for progressive addition of data as a project is developed from inception, through design, and into construction.
The same data structure will be applied to managing health and safety risks in assets, creating a seamless connection between project and asset information models.
A key feature of the new data structure is the ability to create a record of a risk and link it to specific instances of that risk at a given location. In this way, a fall from height risk can be labelled by category, but also recorded at multiple locations, each having a unique entry, so variants can be captured. A location can be registered in a flexible format: as a point, a line or as a bounded box or polygon, enabling risks to be made visible as a layer in the corporate GIS platform.
The data schema hinges on the consistent classification of risk, and by adding in start and end dates at a planning stage, a risk-loaded project programme can be prepared before the construction phase, to help monitor risk accumulations and concentrations in the programme.
Data flows
With the data schema established, the EA has created a new open standard document type from which data can be extracted, analysed and used to inform all parties.
Data will be progressively added as a project progresses and as risks are identified and treated. The data will ultimately be available to any party, at any stage in an asset or project lifecycle.
EA requires all appointed parties to maintain their own collaborative common data exchange, which is aggregated as it passes across the contract line into the EA common data exchange.
This means all parties are responsible for managing their own information, and the EA can aggregate information at a project and asset level.
Common data exchange
Individual files containing risk information arrive in the EA common data exchange and data is extracted into a common risk database, on the client cloud environment. The project has developed three options for data interaction:
using standard tools, such as Excel and Power BI to generate data analytics insight and business intelligence;
adding spatially located risk instances to the corporate GIS tools such as ArcGIS – Easimap; and
maintaining data in a database such as a Master Data Management, where data can be extracted to visualise in a 3D model. A viewer such as 3D Repo SafetiBase provides a visual output.
The health and safety file
With the adoption of a more standardised data schema to create consistency in the digital exchange and management of information, the traditional EA health and safety file template can be updated. Instead of being a static pdf template, the health and safety file is created as a dynamic dashboard of sources of information, bridging the gap between the project and the asset.
This information is made available through the common data exchange and uses the data schema to retrieve summaries of the residual risks that are identified for an asset prior to project completion. The residual risks are those associated with the project and asset that could lead to harm in the use, operation cleaning or maintenance of an asset, as well as including foreseeable risks that might arise from demolition, dismantling or repurposing.
The EA highlights this scenario to prove the project’s value. A subcontractor, required to carry out work on a particular asset, will be able to look up that unique asset record in a central database. It will be apparent that there are risks recorded against that asset. One such is associated with Uniclass Category RK_40_15 Electrical injury risk. This risk is sub-classified as relating to underground power cables. This alerts the subcontractor to the need to check the drawings to ensure it can dig safely.
This is not a first step towards a paywall. We need readers to register with us to help sustain creation of quality editorial content on Construction Management. Registering also means you can manage your own CPDs, comments, newsletter sign-ups and privacy settings. Thank you.
