UAE-based ALEC Holdings embraces the Information Management Intiative

UAE-based ALEC Holdings is one of the first international contracting groups to complete the four-step process of the Information Management Initiative (IMI). The company’s experience has helped to validate materials produced to help organisations embrace the IMI, and which are available to businesses subscribing to become organisational members of nima.

The IMI

The IMI is a collective industry-led and government-supported programme to improve the quality of information management practice and delivery across the built and managed environment sector. Since its November 2024 launch, the IMI, led by nima and supported by the UK’s Construction Leadership Council, has gathered support from a wide range of organisations. Early supporters included professional institutions, trade associations, technology providers, contractors and consultants, with some helping to develop and test the early stages of IMI adoption in their own businesses.

Early engagement with the IMI is a four step process:

1. The IMI invites all organisations to sign up to the over-arching principles of the IMI, become an organisational member of nima, and onboard (step 1: briefing).
2. They can then look in detail at their people, processes, data and technologies and (step 2) assess their maturity.
3. Step 3 involves preparing and issuing an internal organisational mandate based on their maturity and ambition.
4. Then (step 4) they implement relevant rules and methodologies from the IMI Framework (the Framework is still a resource open to all regardless of whether they are organisational members of nima or not).

To support this process, the IMI team has developed three organisation-focused projects:

1. an introductory IMI briefing – now being captured in a briefing pack and animation,
2. a maturity and benefits framework – a tool to assess existing organisation IM maturity with an output that can help inform a business case and roadmap development, and
3. a mandate methodology – step-by-step guidance on how to prepare and then implement an internal organisational IM mandate/policy (steps 3 and 4 of the IMI process).

ALEC’s experience of the IMI

ALEC Holdings has committed to the Information Management Initiative (IMI) as part of our ongoing digital transformation journey. Our new Information Management Policy builds on the foundations of what we already have in place and sets out how we will drive best practice for managing information across our projects to improve decision making, support better project outcomes, and increase return on investment.

At its core, the policy is guided by four principles:
– being purposeful about the information we create
– putting people at the centre through training and clear accountability
– aligning with ISO 19650 standards, and
– maintaining quality through good governance and consistent approaches.

Every business unit will implement the policy proportionate to their current capability, progressing through a phased rollout to 2030. The policy applies to all ALEC Holdings business units, and everyone involved in creating, managing, or using project information from tender response through to project close-out. By working together, we will strengthen our position as the leading construction group in the region.

Andy Boutle, head of digital construction at ALEC Construction adds:

I’m delighted to get this important topic to policy level and I found the four-step IMI process very helpful in framing the policy structure. We are now gathering IM leads and champions from each business unit to work together under a framework to pull in the same direction in a coordinated manner while developing processes, training and tools, and sharing best practice from the different perspectives and scope for each business unit. We will be leveraging the projects and tools being developed under the IMI ahead to support implementation of the policy.

The IMI and nima organisational membership

Shahida Rajabdeen, head of the IMI project team at nima, has been in regular contact with Andy Boutle throughout ALEC’s internal conversations. She says:

It has been helpful to see how an organisation like ALEC has applied the IMI principles and used them in practice to create a well-structured information management policy. ALEC’s processes and their resulting policy have helped us to expand and refine the guidance and template documentation we want to offer to other organisations.

At Digital Construction Week 2026 in London, we were in contact with a number of organisations wanting to be part of the IMI, and who are now becoming organisational members of nima. To further those conversations, we have developed a standard onboarding package – including presentations, guidance and template documents – that businesses will receive once they subscribe to become nima organisational members. In addition, over the next few months, we will be developing a tiered approach to ongoing organisational membership whereby businesses can get additional expert support and potentially gain wider recognition of their IM maturity.

In addition to early members, nima is in discussions with a growing list of prospective organisational members including public sector client organisations, industry supply chain members and technology providers. Through early engagement with the IMI, such businesses will be helping to shape the IM direction, encouraging pan-industry adoption of common approaches to information management, and should achieve better value and improved outcomes.