Reimagining AEC

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks which organisation has failed when an information management task on a project goes undone, and how anyone could prove it in writing. A hypothetical council building a community hub, whose consultant's delegated scope stops at appointment, carries the argument through the four parties and the single information management function of ISO 19650, the principle at clause 7.1 of Part 1 that roles are not job titles, a reading of a project team appointment by appointment, the two matrices that share one name, a populated assignment matrix built from the clause text of...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how many task team plans become one master plan whose dates hold, and what a lead appointed party must do when they cannot. A hypothetical community hub, whose three task plans each look sound until they are combined, carries the argument through clauses 5.4.4 and 5.4.5 of ISO 19650-2: who owns the task information delivery plan, the six things it records for every container, setting dates backwards from the milestone, aggregating the master information delivery plan, telling a sequencing conflict from a shortage of time, and the duties to baseline, notify...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how one BIM execution plan can serve both the tender and the appointment. A hypothetical community hub for a district council, whose tender cites a withdrawn standard, carries the argument from the six areas of clause 5.3.2 of ISO 19650-2, through four drafting techniques and the formal raising of a defective requirement, to confirmation under clause 5.4.1, the five completed appointment documents under change control, and the audit of a template that lags the standard.

Chapters

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what the UK BIM Framework is and is not, and how a legacy document set maps onto the standards in force today. A hypothetical council's information pack, inherited from a 2016 project and about to go out with a tender, carries the argument through the framework and its renaming as the IMI Framework, routing a question to the right guidance and recording the answer, the National Foreword, National Annex and February 2021 corrigendum, the information management mandate, the Construction Playbook and Government Soft Landings, the document-level supersession map of the 1192 suite...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks where information management should sit inside an organisation's quality, risk and safety systems, and what changes when it sits there. A hypothetical design and build contractor, certified to two standards and missing a health and safety exchange milestone, carries the argument through the harmonised structure shared by ISO 9001 and ISO 45001, the common data environment as documented information control, accountability and competence for the information management function, information risk under ISO 31000, corrective action and the normative bridge from ISO 19650-6, and the choice between one system and many, with drafting...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how an information exchange can be specified precisely enough that every party can agree to it and software can check it. A hypothetical college teaching block, where a cost consultant receives room data it cannot trust, carries the argument through the three components of an information delivery manual under ISO 29481-1:2025, the use case and its header, interaction maps, transactions and process maps, exchange requirements built from information units and constraints, the six standard project phases and the standards around the manual, and the step from natural language to...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what it takes for information to be machine readable rather than merely digital. A hypothetical council school campus, whose appointment asks only for information classified to Uniclass, carries the argument through the three jobs of classification, level of information need and data templates, the classification framework of ISO 12006-2, Uniclass and how to read a code, properties and data dictionaries under ISO 23386, data templates under ISO 23387 and who supplies their content, and the drafting of classification and structured data requirements that a supplier can price, answer and be tested...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what decides whether information may move from one party to another, and what the party receiving it may check. A hypothetical transport interchange whose asset data schedule arrives corrupted at the last gate carries the argument through the three actors of ISO 19650-4, the route from work in progress to publication with the mobilisation test and change actions, decision A and the exception at clause 6.4, decision B and its two steps, and the seven criteria clauses of clause 7, including the one the Five Cs shorthand leaves out. The episode...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how health and safety information stops failing at the handovers where it is most needed. Two buildings in a hypothetical regeneration area, delivered by two teams side by side, one a tall residential block and one a partly occupied refurbishment with no model at all, carry the argument through the four ways information fails, the statutory golden thread in England held apart from the standard, the general requirements of ISO 19650-6, its schema of context, risk, incident and treatment records, the cycle of generating, sharing, presenting, using and generalising...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how an organisation decides whether a project needs a security-minded approach to information management, and what has to follow if it does. A hypothetical water treatment works beside a third party's substation, with a regional office fit-out alongside it, carries the argument through the definitions and boundary of ISO 19650-5, the security triage with its three questions and four outcomes, the sensitivity assessment including third-party information and aggregation, accountability and the security strategy, the security management plan and breach response, and the tender, the appointment, the common data environment...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks why a single number such as LOD 300 specifies nothing, and what ISO 7817-1 puts in its place. A hypothetical two-storey community health centre, with its external wall, fire door and air handling unit, carries the argument through the legacy grades and where they break, the four prerequisites of purpose, milestone, actor and object within a breakdown, the three categories of geometrical information, alphanumerical information and documentation with the not applicable rule, the two methods of expression in Annex B, and verification and validation, with a labelled look at Parts 2...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what ISO 19650 requires of a common data environment as a process, as distinct from the platform someone bought. A hypothetical school extension, Northgate Academy, where a coordinator could fix a subcontractor's facade model in ten minutes or send it back, carries the argument through the definition in ISO 19650-1, the three states and the archive, the two transitions and who owns them, status, revision and classification under the UK National Annex, the seven-field container identifier, and how to specify and audit an environment against clause 5.1.7 of ISO 19650-2.

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks how an owner keeps an asset information model true to the asset across years of use. A hypothetical campus estate, whose failed chiller is replaced with information that cannot be linked to the register, carries the argument through the eight activities of ISO 19650-3: the requirements an owner writes, trigger events and the branches of the process, appointing and mobilising with the duty of readiness, accepting and rejecting an information model, and the aggregation and maintenance processes that keep it aligned with the asset, with the golden thread duty...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what has to happen, in what order and by whom, for each appointment to deliver the information a client asked for. A hypothetical leisure centre, where a contractor passes a client's date straight down to its pool water specialist and is left with no time to review, carries the argument through the eight activities of ISO 19650-2, from assessment and need and the tender on both sides, through appointment, the cascade of requirements and the delivery plans, mobilisation and the production of information, to authorisation, acceptance, archiving and lessons...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami asks what a client has to put in writing before the information about its buildings can be managed at all. A hypothetical council that asks only for a BIM project carries the argument through the vocabulary and four principles of ISO 19650-1, the withdrawal of the 1192 suite, the hierarchy of information requirements and how a requirement travels, the information models, containers and states of the common data environment, the parties and the information management function, and the published series with its UK National Annexes and the revision now in draft.<...

The trailer for the ISO standards season of Reimagining AEC, Dr Sepehr Abrishami's own podcast. It sets out the question the season asks of every standard, what a shall clause asks you to do and how anyone would check it, and maps the fifteen episodes in three groups: the core of the ISO 19650 series, the specialist parts and neighbouring standards, and UK practice with its working documents.

Chapters

In Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami reads the RIBA AI Report 2026 through one routine task, the door schedule, which architects in the report see both as work AI could take on and as work through which junior staff learn. He sets out who answered the 2026 survey and where its limits lie, then follows adoption, uses, reported gains, concerns and governance, before attributing each essay's argument to its author. The episode closes with an answer to where AI belongs in an architect's work and who stays accountable for what it produces.

Chapters

In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami tests a claim from the RICS AI in commercial property and construction report 2026, that adoption of artificial intelligence has crossed an inflection point, against the survey evidence behind it. He sets out who answered the survey and where its limits lie, then explains why so many AI pilots stop short of routine practice. The episode follows one invented cost consultancy through the requirements of the RICS professional standard on responsible use of AI, ending with the named surveyor's written decision on whether an AI output can be...

In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami reads the NBS Digital Construction Report 2025 through one sentence from a client board paper, written for teaching, that turns a survey figure into a requirement for every bidder. He sets out who answered the survey and what that does to its figures, then works through its findings on BIM, classification, digital objects and product data, cloud working, artificial intelligence and environmental measurement. The episode closes by rewriting the board paper sentence so that the evidence supports it.

Chapters

In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami follows a twenty-storey residential tower in England, invented for the purpose, through the government's proposals for a single construction regulator, the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's first recommendation. He sets out why the Inquiry rejected a fragmented regulatory system, the outcomes and objectives proposed for the new body, and how buildings, construction products and professions would be drawn together on the foundation of the Building Safety Regulator. The episode closes with what the reform means for clients, designers, contractors and information managers, and with the position at the end...

As host of Reimagining AEC, a show that belongs to him rather than to an employer, Dr Sepehr Abrishami charts one fire door through the life of a residential tower invented for the purpose, to explain the golden thread, the information and processes that English law requires for higher-risk buildings under the Building Safety Act 2022. Duties are traced from design and construction through gateways two and three to the accountable persons who keep and share the information and base their safety case report on it, ending with the eight principles for holding the golden thread and where ISO 19650 practice...

Reimagining AEC is Dr Sepehr Abrishami's own podcast on information in the built environment, and here he follows one pane of glass high on an illustrative tall building from a client's first project meeting to the information kept once the building is in use. Along the way he sets out the documents the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 require, explains why ISO 19650-6:2025 has replaced PAS 1192-6:2018, and traces health and safety needs down the ISO 19650 information requirements into the project and asset information models. The episode closes with the plain language questions and maturity matrix a client can...

Speaking on Reimagining AEC, a podcast he owns and makes himself, Dr Sepehr Abrishami walks a hypothetical engineering consultancy, invented for teaching, through the Information Management Initiative, the industry programme led by nima and the Construction Leadership Council, and sets it beside ALEC Holdings, one of the first international contracting groups reported to have completed the Initiative's four steps. The history from the earlier BIM and information management mandates comes first, then the five layers, the organisations the Initiative touches and its four steps, from on-boarding and the Sector-Wide Directive to an Organisation-Level Mandate and the role-specific rules of...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami follows a plant room with two cramped boilers, the worked example in the 2019 Government Soft Landings guidance, from the business case through design review to aftercare. He sets the guidance against BS 8536:2022, the code that has replaced the standards it applied, and shows how the GSL champion, four themes of target outcomes and plain language questions carry operational needs into ISO 19650 information requirements. The episode closes with handover from the project to the asset information model, aftercare, post-occupancy evaluation and the golden thread of information.

Chapters

Dr Sepehr Abrishami, host and producer of Reimagining AEC, which no university owns, leads an invented owner of office buildings through a roof inspection, a lightning repair and the purchase of a further building to explain how ISO 19650-3 keeps an asset information model accurate while an asset is in use. He then places the standard in the life of an asset and in asset management, compares it with ISO 19650-2, explains trigger events and the pathways and loops of the process, and shows how organisational, asset and exchange information requirements lead every pass back to the asset information...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami starts from a reported court case in which a contractor lost access to the design data it needed, and asks what technology must do to keep an owner's information findable, trustworthy and usable for decades. He works through the interoperability code of practice Delivering Valuable Data, published by the Government and Industry Interoperability Group in April 2023, testing its core principle and its five supporting principles of longevity, security, ownership, value and competition against a hypothetical hospital estate moving to a new information management provider. The episode ends by setting the...

In an episode of Reimagining AEC, a podcast with no institutional backing, Dr Sepehr Abrishami tracks a plant room pump of his own invention from its first requirement to its handover record, to show how information about an asset can outlast the software that produced it. Open data in UK policy and in ISO 19650, six buildingSMART standards and where each stands now, their place in the delivery process of ISO 19650-2 including rule-based checking, and the right way to specify COBie on a UK project now that BS 1192-4 has been withdrawn make up the rest.

Chapters<...

Dr Sepehr Abrishami, who makes Reimagining AEC separately from the programme he leads, poses the choice a task team faces when it lists a party wall detail in its plan, between predicting the drawings and naming the information alone, and uses the UK guidance's own door example to show how a delivery team decides which task team delivers a door schedule, by what date, and how a late delivery would be seen in time. Planning is placed within the delivery of information, the high-level and detailed responsibility matrices are distinguished from the information management assignment matrix, the six records...

Dr Sepehr Abrishami builds this episode of Reimagining AEC, his personal podcast, around the UK guidance's own example of a client, a main contractor and a steelwork sub-contractor two tiers below the client, which signs nothing with that client yet must produce information to its requirements. His account covers why ISO 19650-2 and ISO 19650-3 require an information protocol in every appointment, the Information Particulars and thirteen clauses of the two UK templates, the five activities and incorporation clause that make a protocol binding, and neutral terminology, multi-party working, trigger events and the points where a protocol can fail.<...

Here on Reimagining AEC, the show he runs apart from any employer, Dr Sepehr Abrishami presents a constructed case of a client that picks a main contractor for the strength of its BIM execution plan, then finds that nothing in the appointment obliges the contractor to follow it. Using the guidance's own example of a client, a main contractor and a steelwork sub-contractor, he shows what the client issues and evaluates at tender, how clause 5.3.2 shapes the pre-appointment BIM execution plan, why additions to the project's information standard are easier to accept than amendments, and how confirming the plan...

Writing and presenting Reimagining AEC as personal work, Dr Sepehr Abrishami traces a fictional client from the UK guidance, Organisation X, as it turns a corporate commitment to halve its energy consumption by 2030 into deliverables with a provider, a format and a date. Why requirements start from the receiver's purpose, how organisational, asset and project information requirements cascade into exchange information requirements, and how purposes, structure, acceptance criteria and the level of information need make requirements precise enough to check are the ground covered.

Chapters

In his independent podcast Reimagining AEC, Dr Sepehr Abrishami takes the UK template that expands ISO 19650-2 into one hundred and thirty information management tasks and asks how a project settles, for each one, who does it, who answers for it, who is consulted and who is informed. One task, the review of information before it is shared in the common data environment, serves as the test case for the four RACI allocations and the rule of a single accountable party, a reading of one row of the template, the split between what the standard fixes and what parties...

Reimagining AEC host Dr Sepehr Abrishami, whose podcast is a personal project rather than a university production, uses a client weighing whether to let its architect review and accept the information model on its behalf to work out who does information management on a project with one client, an architect, a main contractor and a client's project manager. Drawing on the worked example in the UK guidance, he describes the information management function and why ISO 19650-2 embeds it in existing roles, the activities each party leads, the resources each lead appointed party prepares at tender and on appointment...

For this episode of Reimagining AEC, a podcast he produces independently, Dr Sepehr Abrishami begins at a delivery milestone, with a client deciding whether to accept part of an incomplete steel frame model, and asks who produces, checks, authorises and accepts information on a project. A chain of appointments from a client, through a design and build contractor, to a steelwork sub-contractor runs through the three parties and three teams of ISO 19650, the effect of procurement and novation, the eight activities of the ISO 19650-2 delivery process and who leads each one, and the rules for authorisation, acceptance and...

On Reimagining AEC, his own podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami opens with a tender clause that asks only for BIM to ISO 19650 and works out what the client should have written instead. One structural steel specification from the worked example in the UK concepts guidance carries the argument through the case for information management and its history, the parties, teams and hierarchy of information requirements, the information delivery cycle and the two responsibility matrices, the common data environment, containers, level of information need and classification, and the contractual, security and UK National Annex rules that give a container its name...

On his self-produced podcast, Reimagining AEC, Dr Sepehr Abrishami puts two copies of one general arrangement drawing side by side, revision P02 and revision C01, and asks how a project lets anyone tell which version of an information container to rely on, and for what. From a task team's first saved model at RIBA Stage 3 to a published contractual drawing in UK guidance Part C, the worked example shows the CDE as a workflow served by technical solutions, the four information container states, the metadata every container carries, the revision and status codes of the 2021 UK National Annex to...

On Reimagining AEC, his own independent podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami follows one concrete work package on an illustrative station project to explain how a building information model supports cost estimation, budgeting and control. The episode builds a progress monitoring strategy on a seven-level work breakdown structure and rules of credit, works through earned value management and its two indices, the cost performance index and the schedule performance index, and examines how quantity, progress and cost data are collected from site and brought together in a BIM-based project controls system on a large programme.

Chapters

In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own independent podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami follows one constrained city-centre site, with a single access road and two tower cranes, to explain how 4D BIM links the model to the construction programme. The episode covers the place of 4D within ISO 19650, what the link offers in coordination, quantities and site logistics, the six steps that build a 4D model, the barriers to adoption, and the use of 4D in health and safety. It closes with drones, wearable sensors and digital twins, which carry the same link onto the live site.

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In this episode of Reimagining AEC, his own independent podcast, Dr Sepehr Abrishami follows one services riser in a residential block to set out what building information modelling is and what it is for. The episode covers the ISO 19650 definition of BIM, the dimensions from 3D to 6D, the move from PAS 1192 to ISO 19650, the common data environment, level of information need, and the chain from exchange information requirements to delivery plans. It closes with the golden thread under the Building Safety Act 2022 and the place of digital twins in the same framework.

Chapters

Dr Sepehr Abrishami introduces Reimagining AEC, his own podcast on how the built environment handles information. In under five minutes he sets out the problem the show exists for, the subjects the episodes cover, from the ISO 19650 series and the common data environment to the golden thread and artificial intelligence in practice, how the episodes stand alone so they can be heard in any order, who is speaking and who the show is for.

Chapters