nima: since 2016, accelerating digital transformation in the built and managed environment
The early 21st century has seen growing digitalisation of the built environment sector, including increasingly wider adoption of building information modelling (BIM). The UK Government set out a BIM vision in 2010 and mandated BIM adoption by April 2016 across construction projects procured by central government departments. UK BIM processes were subsequently detailed in prototype documents that evolved to become the international ISO 19650 standards, published in 2018.
Building on the work of the UK BIM Task Group, nima was established as the UK BIM Alliance in 2016 to help make BIM ‘business as usual’. It provided an umbrella for existing ‘BIM4’ and regional groups (today nima networks) and helped connect the ‘UKBIMcrew’, and in 2017 it incorporated bSUKI, the UK and Ireland chapter of buildingSMART International. And It also led – with the British Standards Institution and the Centre for Digital Built Britain – the creation of the UK BIM Framework in 2019. Regularly updated, and endorsed by the UK Government’s Construction Playbook and the Transforming Infrastructure Performance Roadmap to 2030, this continues to provide free online guidance and resources to industry.
Today, however, BIM is just part of a growing information management challenge. Terms such as artificial intelligence (including ChatGPT), machine learning, the Internet of Things, interoperability, digital twins, drones, robotics, open data, smart buildings and the golden thread are all now part of our expanding technological lexicon.
The UK BIM Alliance changed its name to nima (ancient Greek for ‘that which is spun, thread’) in October 2022 partly because it wanted to help industry in the practical application of these wider information management (IM) opportunities (this ‘BIM to IM’ paper by Fiona Moore and Casey Rutland provides some useful context). In late 2023, the GIIG, a not-for-profit trading arm of nima, began its first IM client commissions.
Nima: the information management organisation accelerating digital transformation in the built and managed environment
At the same time, nima also began working with the Construction Leadership Council on accelerating digital transformation in the built and managed environment across the UK. The Information Management Initiative (IMI) was launched in November 2024, with nima coordinating the initiative, supported by the CLC, and in May 2025, the UK BIM Framework became the IMI Framework.
And, also in May 2025, nima took a strategic step, aiming to become the key organisation for information management practitioners. It launched a membership scheme intended to make the current volunteer-led, virtual organisation more resilient, to help it better support and represent information management practitioners, and to foster wider digital transformation across the sector.
