A new collaboration aims to ensure greater data interoperability across the entire lifecycle for the UK’s complex estates.
nima (formerly the UK BIM Alliance) and the Digital Operations Working Group (DOWG) have announced a collaboration aimed at fixing the structural misalignment in how built environment data is captured, handed over, and managed.
The collaboration, unveiled at Digital Construction Week (DCW) 2026, marks a critical shift from traditional “project-biased” delivery toward an “operations-led” digital economy.
The Digital Operations Working Group (DOWG) was established by Steven Boyd MBE, Gordon Mitchell FIWFM, and Justin Kirby to move the built environment beyond theoretical discussion and into direct action.
In relation to buildings, while the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector has historically focused on the three-year capital delivery phase, the DOWG was founded to address the 60-year operational reality that follows.
The “gap” between project delivery and long-term estate management consistently manifests as poor handovers, unusable data, and operational risks that persist for decades. While the operations phase accounts for at least 70% of a building’s whole-life costs, its true significance lies in value creation. By shifting focus from static bricks-and-mortar to dynamic digital operations, building owners unlock critical value across the asset lifecycle. It is in this phase that safety, carbon performance, and user experience are either realised or eroded. The DOWG aims to ensure these outcomes are secured through a “Digital Handshake”—a formal connection between capital delivery and long-term estate management.
This collaboration with nima explicitly targets this friction by shifting the focus entirely from “Construction Project” data to “Operations-led” data. The core goal of the collaboration is to ensure the industry collects and manages only the data needed for the operational activity necessary to deliver real, measurable outcomes for asset owners.
Central to the collaboration is the deployment of “Right-to-Left” thinking. This methodology mandates that successful digital operations and smart buildings must start with the asset owner’s desired outcomes and the operator’s requirements, rather than simply accepting the data the contractor has available at the end of the project.
The upcoming Digital Operations Playbook addresses this by setting out a clear approach that aligns existing, fragmented industry standards—including ISO 19650, ISO 41001, NRM3, and SFG20—into a single, unified framework. This approach enables a true “Digital Handshake,” replacing massive dumps of available project data at handover with the effective, targeted sharing of the precise data required for operations.
The collaboration structurally positions the DOWG as the specialised “operational specialist engine” that supports the Information Management Initiative (IMI), launched by nima and the Construction Leadership Council in November 2024. The IMI is based around four principles – recognising the whole life purpose of information and data, upskilling people in information management, taking a common, consistent and data-centric approach, and establishing clear data and information governance principles.
While nima sets the high-level framework for information management across the entire built and managed environment via the IMI Framework, the DOWG provides the pragmatic, realistic steps that make the IMI actionable for complex estate management on the ground. The DOWG will lead an IM for Digital Operations (IM4DO) group for nima.
To ensure this work remains deeply rooted in the practical needs of estate management, the DOWG has established an Expert Advisory Panel. Representing the “Voice of the Sector,” the initial panel features industry leaders Alex Plenty (Head of Digital Construction at Skanska), Jo Harris (UK&I Head of Technical Services at Sodexo), and Andy Green (Director at AtkinsRealis and lead of the ADS Alliance), bridging information management, asset management, and daily FM operations.
Dr. Anne Kemp OBE, Chair of nima, commented: “As steward of the IMI, nima is committed to a whole-life approach to information management in the built and managed environment. This collaboration with the Digital Operations Working Group will help to accelerate our direction of travel.”
Steven Boyd MBE, Co-Lead of the DOWG, added: “The Digital Operations Working Group collaborates across the sector to raise the standard of built environment operations by joining the dots across existing guidance. Working in collaboration with nima will expand our reach and support our mission.”
Gordon Mitchell FIWFM, Co-Lead of the DOWG and nima’s head of digital operations, added: “Digital transformation cannot stop at project completion. The real value of information is realised during operations, where data becomes intelligence that supports safety, performance and whole-life outcomes. This collaboration is about creating a practical ‘Digital Handshake’ that not only joins the dots between project delivery and operational reality, but helps unify the system around the information actually needed to operate, maintain and improve our built environment.”
