Standardised data and structured information management are vital for long-term asset maintenance

Two recent reports have criticised standards of record keeping and information management. A January 2025 report from the UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) has highlighted departmental shortcomings in managing maintenance information about thousands of public sector assets. And a UK Housing Ombudsman case found poor record-keeping potentially delayed safety interventions and exposed residents to unnecessary risks. Nima believes complying with the Information Management Initiative (IMI) principles will help such organisations deliver better data and information about their assets across their life cycles.

NAO report

The public spending watchdog has estimated that the government’s maintenance backlog is at least £49 billion. The NAO report (Managing public service facilities) found that Ministry of Defence properties, schools and NHS properties have a backlog totalling more than £10 billion each and make up 88% of the total backlog. Sites including prisons, job and assessment centres, courts, and museums and galleries have backlogs less than £2 billion each and make up the remaining 12%.

The true cost of full remediation is not known, but the Office of Government Property (OGP) believes it could be substantially higher than estimated. This is because the government’s data on the condition of its properties is incomplete and out of date. The combination of incomplete data and the lack of a comprehensive strategy around asset management hinder the government’s ability to make effective funding decisions.

Data and transparency

The NAO’s report details four key findings with respect to data:

1. Department Strategic Asset Management Plans (SAMPs) are of varying quality in terms of both format and level of detail. The SAMP is a mandatory requirement for all departments with a property portfolio. It helps departments consider the totality of their assets and plan how to manage maintenance and disposals in the longer term. However, not all departments prepare comprehensive plans.
2. The government’s data on the condition of its properties and the maintenance backlog are incomplete, out of date, and use inconsistent definitions. This hinders the government’s ability to make effective funding decisions. Organisations include different costs in their calculations of the backlog, preventing decision-makers from comparing maintenance backlogs across government. This affects the government’s ability to make strategic decisions on property, including prioritisation of funding and delivery of cross-government initiatives.
3. The government is taking action to improve the quality, completeness and consistency of information on the condition of its property and the maintenance backlog. After some delays, the OGP is introducing InSite, an enhanced data collection system, and aims to have completed its implementation by March 2025. The OGP hopes the new system will improve data consistency and will use it to gather information on government property, as per the government property data standard. Additionally, as part of the Better Buildings programme, the OGP is undertaking initiatives to improve data quality, such as publishing tools to help departments produce better business cases for maintenance.
4. There is limited transparency on the condition of government property and the maintenance backlog. The Cabinet Office does not regularly publish information on the condition of government property and the backlog, as it is incomplete. Only NHS England publishes backlog costs annually. The Department for Education (DfE) has also previously published statistics on the condition of government-funded schools in England. The latest published data date back to surveys carried out from 2017 to 2019 and a new data collection programme is ongoing.

The NAO report has also been covered by BIMplus (see 22 January 2025: Government must mandate standardised data to address £47bn maintenance backlog), which has also reported on problems arising from a social landlord’s poor record-keeping (see 20 February 2025: Incorrect asbestos data reinforces the need for robust information management); see also article in CIOB sister publication Construction Management).

Housing Ombudsman investigation

An investigation by the Housing Ombudsman exposed 800 instances of incorrect data on an asbestos register held by former social housing landlord, One Housing. Poor information management issues were revealed following a ceiling collapse at a resident’s home in March 2022. Repairs took 14 months as the landlord did not have accurate, up-to-date records about the presence of asbestos in the property. One Housing subsequently identified errors in its risk-scoring system and information management.

Richard Blakeway, Housing Ombudsman, said: “[This] underscores the importance of knowledge and information management…. Our Centre for Learning has resources on how to tackle some of the key issues…, as well as training and workshops to equip social housing landlords with the tools they need to improve.”

A spokesperson for nima network BIM for Housing Associations (BIM4HAs) said:

“Poor information management can have serious consequences: delaying safety interventions and exposing residents to unnecessary risks. This case demonstrates why maintaining reliable, up-to-date information is not just best practice, but an essential requirement for ensuring safe homes, enhancing transparency and building greater trust with residents.

“BIM4HAs firmly believes that structured information management is essential to address the key challenges such as building safety, life safety, retrofit planning and ongoing property management. The BIM4HAs Toolkit (which implements the UK BIM Framework for housing) and the Construction Leadership Council [CLC] Golden Thread Guidance together support better decision-making, risk mitigation and compliance with safety regulations. The One Housing case is a stark reminder of the need for housing providers to adopt and implement these structured approaches to information management.” 

How the IMI will help

The nima/CLC Information Management Initiative (IMI) outlines a set of principles that will help organisations in the built and natural environment sector to enable greater sharing of better data and information across the whole life of assets. For example, organisations should …

• … clearly identify the relevance of, and the purpose for, data and information
• … consider an asset as both the physical structure and the data and information held to manage it
• … converge on a common framework for defining, procuring, delivering, storing and using data and information that is interoperable
• … as appropriate, incorporate a data and information architecture for their business and interfaces with others
• … establish clear governance, stewardship, ethics, quality, security, interoperability, longevity, openness and integrity of data and information, and its use
• … clearly identify, procure, and deliver the right data and information at the right time and in the right structure to enable sharing and ease of use, and
• … consider data and information independently from technology to enable sharing and ease of use.