Project Indigo

A nima project, building on nima’s vision of simple information management for the global built environment:
“just the information I need, when and how I need it”.

What is Project Indigo – and why does it matter

Managing information in the built environment has become overwhelmingly complex. Standards, frameworks, and regulations have multiplied over the last two decades, often adding layers of complication rather than clarity. The result? A mass of data that is underused, inconsistent, or inaccessible.

Project Indigo is a nima discovery project: a clean-sheet exploration of what information management could look like if we reimagined it from first principles. Our aim is to deliver a dramatically better – and an order of magnitude simpler – information management model for the built environment, fit for all stakeholders.

Who benefits – and how Project Indigo aims to help them

  • Asset owners and operators – gain machine-verifiable assurance that their assets comply with regulations and client requirements. Instead of wading through hundreds of PDFs, owners get direct answers: “Does my building comply with this safety rule?” – with the machine able to prove and explain why.
  • Designers and constructors – work with information requirements expressed in formal semantic rules, reducing ambiguity and costly rework. For example, HVAC system trade-offs or school door specifications can be modelled in machine readable semantics and tested automatically against design intent.
  • Product manufacturers – see their product data connected into a unified semantic framework rather than siloed datasheets or unnecessarily constrained databases. This makes their components easier to identify, specify, and compare, and subsequently reuse in data platforms and digital twins through the entire asset lifecycle.
  • Standards bodies and policymakers – can test the logical consistency of standards and classifications before release, avoiding the overlapping and contradictory rules that currently plague the sector.
  • Technology providers and platform developers – gain access to a new layer of semantic infrastructure, enabling machines not just to exchange data but to understand it. This unlocks advanced automation, reasoning, and trustworthy AI in the built environment.
  • Society and end-users – benefit from safer homes, workplaces, and infrastructure because processes including compliance checks, safety cases, and sustainability assessments are no longer manual, error-prone, or piecemeal — they are systematic, provable, and transparent.

By encapsulating complexity—so that people and systems only see what is relevant to them—we remove barriers, reduce waste, and unlock opportunities.

How we’re doing it

Project Indigo is grounded in three guiding principles:

  1. Data, digital, and machine first – moving beyond documents to computable knowledge.
  2. Focus on the destination – imagine the world we want, unconstrained by today’s compromises.
  3. Learn from what has gone before – reuse what works, but do not let legacy be a barrier.

We are using formal semantic ontologies, such as SUMO (Suggested Upper Merged Ontology), combined with theorem provers like Vampire, to enable machines to understand, reason, and even verify compliance against rules and regulations.

Who is involved

Project Indigo brings together a hand-picked group of global experts from academia, industry, and technology. The Core Team includes specialists in information management, AI, ontology engineering, data ethics, construction, and real estate. Alongside them, a wider Sounding Board provides diverse perspectives and helps test emerging ideas.

Key contributors include:

  • Academics and researchers in AI, data, and the built environment.
  • Industry leaders from construction, real estate, and product manufacturing.
  • Policy and standards experts shaping the next generation of digital frameworks.

The current core team is:

[list of core team participants here]

Current focus areas

We are actively exploring six key areas of metadata critical to a new information management model:

  • Ontology, classification, and semantics – agreeing what symbols mean, so machines and people share the same understanding.
  • Origin and ownership – ensuring authenticity, traceability, and provenance.
  • Authentication and authorization – managing rights and identity.
  • Quality – defining and measuring trustworthiness of data.
  • Referencing – ensuring uniqueness, avoiding duplication, and linking across systems.
  • Format and structure – providing reference implementations for consistent data exchange.

Among our next steps are:

  • Expressing demonstration scenarios (like HVAC replacement or school design decisions) in SUMO and validating decisions with automated reasoning.
  • Exploring classification reform through semantic infrastructure, including how Uniclass and related systems could be unified.
  • Automating the translation of human-readable standards into machine-readable ontology to accelerate adoption.

How you can contribute

Project Indigo is intentionally a sandbox: a place to experiment, test, and evolve ideas quickly. To succeed, we need:

  • Investment: Funding is required to support ontology modelling, pilot projects, and tooling (approx. £250k–£300k resource requirement in 2026).
  • Industry partners: Clients and owners willing to provide real-world pilot projects.
  • Technical expertise: Contributions from data scientists, ontologists, AI developers, and standards custodians.
  • Secondments: Organisations willing to second skilled people to the project instead of cash contributions.

If you want to shape the future of data in the built environment—whether through resources, projects, or expertise—we’d love to hear from you – e-mail indigo@wearenima.im.