The creation of the Uniclass Advisory Board (UAB) is announced with a remit to advise on potential improvements to Uniclass, a classification system used to organise information across all construction industry disciplines, helping to make interoperability between software platforms easier, to aid with better outcomes.
6 January 2022
The creation of the Uniclass Advisory Board (UAB) is announced with a remit to advise on potential improvements to Uniclass 2015, a classification system used to organise information across all construction industry disciplines, helping to make interoperability between software platforms easier, to aid with better outcomes.
Meeting quarterly, UAB will be made up of a cross-section of relevant stakeholder organisations, including representatives from bodies who supply, consume and procure construction data.
Specifically, UAB will explore and advise upon Uniclass in relation to digital construction’s evolution and maturation alongside the evolving need for data security around sensitive assets, buildings and infrastructure.
UAB’s member organisations include Association of Cost Engineers (AcostE), Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists (CIAT), Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), Institute of Asset Management (IAM) and UK BIM Alliance (UKBIMA).
Fiona Moore will be UAB’s chair, who currently oversees the technical delivery of the Government & Industry Interoperability Group (GIIG). NBS experts Sarah Delany and Tina Pringle will also be sitting on the board, providing expert technical advice and insights.
Commenting on the creation of UAB, Fiona Moore said, “Those implementing information management processes and the technologies that facilitate them know first-hand how important having a shared way to classify every aspect of a construction project is. The pace of adoption of digital construction is speeding up and that’s why we need to ensure that naming conventions and approaches are robust and reflect what’s happening in the field. That’s why the creation of an industry wide panel in the form of the UAB will help to continuously improve Uniclass and make sure it continues to be an important part of driving up construction quality.”
UAB attendee, Tina Pringle, Director of Digital Information, NBS and a member of the team who devised Uniclass 2015 said, “Uniclass 2015 is a powerful system as it provides a unified classification system for the construction sector. It delivers a hierarchical suite of tables that allow for ‘things’ of all sizes to be classified from an individual screw through to a university campus or road network. It allows for buildings, landscape, and infrastructure to all be classified using one system. As you can see it’s very powerful, yet as digital construction evolves so must Uniclass. This advisory board is going to be a powerful way to ensure that the system remains fit for purpose as digital construction matures.”
Uniclass Explained
Uniclass is a consistent classification structure for all disciplines in the construction industry.
It contains tables classifying items of any scale, from a large facility such as a railway, down to products such as a CCTV camera in a railway station. The classifications within the tables allow buildings, landscape and infrastructure to be classified under one unified scheme.
Uniclass is an essential way of identifying and managing the vast amount of information that’s involved in a construction project, and it’s a requirement for BIM projects, as set by the BS EN ISO 19650 series of standards.
