Nick Nisbet, the author of the newly published ISO 19650-6:2025, which covers information management for health and safety, explains its benefits to Denise Chevin and what has changed from the draft version.
The new international standard for sharing health and safety information throughout the life cycle of a building has been published.
As well as helping to improve health and safety performance, the new standard will also provide a key tool for managing the golden thread of information for higher-risk buildings (HRBs) that is now required by the Building Safety Act.
The standard, ISO 19650-6:2025, is the final part of the ISO 19650 series, for managing information over the whole life cycle of a built asset – including, but not exclusively using, building information modelling (BIM).
It contains all the same principles and high-level requirements as the UK BIM Framework and is closely aligned with the current UK 1192 standards. In a key change from the draft version, it has also been adapted to those not using BIM.
The author of ISO 19650-6:2025 is Nick Nisbet, a built environment information consultant and vice-chair of buildingSMART UKI, who has been working on it for two-and-a-half years.
He explains its benefits: “It’s a method for sharing the risk registers in a project, which are a requirement of the CDM regulations, in a way that the participants in the project can contribute to.
“It structures information about risks, and not only health and safety risks but also incidents and mitigations, so that everyone in the project can access that information – principal designer, principal contractor and owner. The roles of principal designer and contractor are quite isolated, and so this should help bring them into the whole team.
Using structured information can result in improved health and safety performance, fewer incidents and associated impacts. It can also provide clearer, more assured and relevant health and safety information to the right people at the right time.
Nisbet says that setting out a standard approach to health and safety information is an “important element” of the golden thread: “It helps ensure that the information isn’t lost or overlooked,” he says.
What is ISO 19650-6?
The new standard is applicable to individuals and organisations that contribute to and influence the procurement, design, construction, use (including maintenance) and
end of life of building and infrastructure assets.
The document:
Specifies requirements for the collaborative sharing of structured health and safety information throughout project and asset life cycles.
Supports the digitisation of structured health and safety information in project and asset life cycles progressively from the outset.
Provides specification on how health and safety information is shared for use throughout project and asset life cycle.
Sets out a health and safety information cycle framework for the identification, use, sharing and generalisation of health and safety.
The principles and requirements of the standard can be applied equally to project delivery and buildings in use. Though it is applicable to – and extremely important to – the generation of BIM information, it is also important for those that are not using it.
The draft was consulted on in the early part of 2024. Key differences between the draft and the final standard include:
- More emphasis that it is a communication standard – not a risk assessment standard, which is covered in the ISO 31000 series.
- Developing the likelihood and consequence as an informative annex.
- Allowing the standard to be used in ‘non-BIM’ situations.
Nisbet says: “ISO 19650 extends the ideas in PAS 1192-6. The PAS still has some useful suggestions on techniques and technologies for identifying risk, but otherwise ISO 19650-6 supersedes it.
“PAS 1192-6 was developed by Peter Nicholas and myself working with the BIM4HS (BIM 4 Health and Safety) working group.”
He stresses: “The standard is about communicating the risk information, and it doesn’t attempt to tell people how they should do risk assessments.”
The new standard will be officially launched at the BSI built environment summit on Wednesday 26 March 2025.
“It fits in with the processes described in ISO 19650-2 and -3 with some additional considerations about making sure that the information is structured and accessible,” he says.
“So, for example, in the UK the recommendation would be to classify risks using the Uniclass RK risk table for health and safety risks in construction and in buildings in use, which was developed by HSE and myself, in parallel with developing the new standard, and published in October 2023.”
The classification of risk in buildings in use is again a requirement under the Building Safety Act.
Further BSI safety standards in the pipeline
Fire risk assessment for housing:
The new standard for fire risk assessment, BS 9792, will provide recommendations and examples of documentation for undertaking and recording fire risk assessments related to housing. It will supersede PAS 79-2, which was withdrawn in 2021.
Fire risk assessor competence:
BSI is developing a new standard on the competence of fire risk assessors. BS 8674 builds upon the success of the BS 867X series by establishing the competence (skill, knowledge, experience and behaviours) that must be attained by individuals undertaking general fire risk assessments. It is suitable for a range of building types.
Construction product competence:
BS 8670-2 will describe the core competencies of those working with construction products, as well as recommending how such competencies can be integrated into competence frameworks. The standard is due out in 2026.
Dan Rossiter
