Information management challenges in social housing
SNG (Sovereign Network Group) is working through a familiar challenge, and at scale. Following a merger, the organisation is aligning systems, processes and teams while also responding to the requirements of the Building Safety Act, including the need for a clear, digital golden thread of information.
As Ishka Heart, Head of Digital Building Information at SNG, puts it: “There has been an exceptional amount of change in the organisation for an extended period of time which has been challenging to navigate.”
SNG owns and manages over 86,000 homes, with plans to deliver to deliver around 2,500 new homes a year. The range of buildings within its portfolio, from low-rise housing to complex high-rise residential, brings different regulatory pressures and information needs.
The risk sits in how information is managed across that portfolio. Information is already being handed over from contractors as part of development and delivery. The issue is whether that information can be easily found and is verified, so it can be relied on when needed to support maintenance activity or respond to compliance requirements.
Moving beyond system implementation
SNG had already introduced a common data environment (CDE). The question was how to make it work in practice. Thomas Whiting, Director of Amodal explains the gap simply: “They bought technology, but was it optimised to their process needs?” Tailoring and optimising it to really add value became the focus.
Amodal supported SNG in reviewing how information should be structured, how it should move through the business, and how the system needed to be configured to support that. This included reworking roles, permissions, folder structures, metadata and workflows, alongside supporting documentation and strategy.
For SNG, the value of working with Amodal was more than delivery. It was having an experienced team to challenge and sense-check decisions in real time, particularly during early discovery and rollout.
“What’s really good about the way Amodal work with us is the sound boarding and sense of a supportive team who are poised and ready to find solutions.” says Ishka. “We have lots of good conversations… and immediate feedback on what we could be doing.”
That input has been particularly important given the scale of rollout. The platform needs to work for different users, from document controllers being tasked to mass migrate project documentation as well as managing information day to day, to stakeholders who are customer or regulator facing, who need to locate information quickly.
Training has therefore been shaped around roles, not system functionality. The focus of the training Amodal have designed and delivered for SNG is on how people actually use the information, not how they access it.
Ishka is clear that this kind of change brings challenges. “This system implementation is just one of many at SNG as the dust settles after the merger. It adds to the landscape of several systems that users have to interact with daily. Getting peoples time for, and interest in, understanding how to utilise features of a new cloud-based platform, can be difficult. We’ve been shifting users from searching in familiar folders or asking someone that might know to using keyword searching and filtering by metadata (and trusting this will be correct). Stakeholders want reliable information, fast. So, adoption of new information management processes and use of a CDE, is an ongoing culture change.”
Changes to ways of working can be disruptive, and adoption and embedment takes time, particularly when teams are balancing other priorities. The approach has been to bring people along gradually, with targeted training, clear guidance and ongoing support to build confidence and understanding.
Improving the transition from PIM to AIM
At the centre of the work is the transition from project information into asset information.
SNG receives large volumes of data from contractors and delivery partners. The challenge is making sure that information lands in a way that can be used by different teams and for different purposes from construction.
“From building safety and operations through to resident support, a lot of people are relying on the same data to achieve a wide range of outcomes. We need to make sure the right people have the right information at the right time in the format that they want to see it,” explains Ishka.
One example of this is how information is referenced across a project lifecycle. During the design phase, properties may only exist as plot numbers. Later, they are defined by addresses and internal identifiers. Without a clear link between those stages, information becomes harder to retrieve and use.
SNG is working to address that by strengthening how those references are connected, so that information can be surfaced consistently regardless of how it is searched.
For Amodal, this transition point between Project Information Model (PIM) and Asset Information Model (AIM) is where much of the complexity sits.
Tom highlights it directly: “For asset owners with large portfolios, managing the PIM to AIM process isn’t straight-forward… it’s a perplexing question to answer – ‘how you smoothly do that?’ You need to validate handover information, verify all deliverables have been received, change terminology from project delivery to operational systems needs, and ensure everything is clearly signposted as it lands within the operational, asset in-use phase.”
This work is happening while legacy information is being reviewed and new projects are continuing to progress, which adds to the complexity.
Building a more consistent future
The work is still in progress, being paced at a level that can be sensibly managed and controlled. Document and data migration is underway, CDE system configuration has been refined, and training is being rolled out across different user groups. The focus now is on making the system consistent and usable, while identifying gaps and improving the approach as it develops.
At the same time, SNG is setting up future projects differently so that information is structured correctly from the outset. A key to this, is closely working with partners and supply chains, to get their buy in and deliver it to us in this way. This reduces the need for rework and supports a smoother handover into asset management.
The result is a more consistent and practical approach to managing information across the organisation, helping SNG rely on the data it receives and access it more easily when needed.
For Amodal, the focus is aligned with that goal: ensuring that information remains structured, accessible and useful beyond project completion, so it continues to support SNG’s teams throughout the lifecycle of its assets.
Images kindly provided by SNG
Ishka Heart is the Head of Digital Building Information at SNG, leading the development of SNG’s Digital Building Information Strategy within the Built Environment team, supporting Development regions across the organisation. She oversee digital information requirements aligned to the UK BIM Framework and is leading the implementation of SNG’s Common Data Environment (CDE) platform as part of the organisation’s Single Asset View (SAVi) programme.
Contact us today
Discover how Amodal can help you deliver safer, smarter, and more compliant projects and assets.