The Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) was a partnership between the University of Cambridge and UK's Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy. The CDBB was established in 2017 to support the transformation of the UK built environment using digital technologies to better design, build, maintain and integrate assets. It was the home of the UK BIM programme, begun by the UK BIM Task Group (2011-2017), and the National Digital Twin programme.
In May 2011, UK Government Chief Construction Adviser Paul Morrell called for adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) on UK government construction projects. [1] The UK BIM Task Group was a UK Government-funded group, managed through the Cabinet Office, and created in 2011. Chaired by Mark Bew, it was founded to "drive adoption of BIM across government" in support of the Government Construction Strategy. [2] It led the government's BIM programme and requirements, [3] including a free-to-use set of UK standards and tools that defined 'level 2 BIM'. [4] The BIM Task Group later took responsibility for delivering the Digital Built Britain strategy, [5] [6] [7] published in February 2015. [8] [9]
The work of the BIM Task Group continued under the stewardship of the Cambridge-based Centre for Digital Built Britain, [10] announced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in December 2017 and formally launched in early 2018. Its role was to support the transformation of the UK's construction sector using digital technologies to better plan, build, maintain and use infrastructure. [11]
In October 2019, the CDBB, the UK BIM Alliance and the BSI Group launched the UK BIM Framework. Superseding the BIM levels approach, the framework describes an overarching approach to implementing BIM in the UK, integrating the international ISO 19650 series of standards into UK processes and practice. [12]
In March 2022, the CDBB completed its mission, [13] passing the Digital Twin Hub, International Programme, and Climate Resilience Demonstrator to the Connected Places Catapult. The final research projects within the Construction Innovation Hub Programme will complete by September 2022.
The CDBB was led by Professor Andy Neely, building on the work of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC), Cambridge Big Data, the Distributed Information and Automation Lab, the Cambridge Service Alliance and the Institute for Manufacturing. The CDBB was based in the CSIC's facility, the Maxwell Centre, in West Cambridge. [11]
The CDBB was a member of the Construction Innovation Hub, alongside the Building Research Establishment and the Manufacturing Technology Centre, and collaborated with other partners in the Transforming Construction Sector Deal.
The Digital Built Britain strategy expanded the remit beyond BIM to include other digital processes and technologies, including new contractual frameworks, open data standards, data analytics and big data. [8] For example, in November 2018, the CDBB published The Gemini Principles, a framework to guide the development of the National Digital Twin - an ecosystem of connected digital twins. The National Digital Twin was first recommended in the National Infrastructure Commission's December 2017 Data for the Public Good report. [14] Mott MacDonald CTO Mark Enzer, Head of the National Digital Twin programme, was awarded OBE in October 2020. [15]
Building information modeling (BIM) is a process supported by various tools, technologies and contracts involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of places. Building information models (BIMs) are computer files which can be extracted, exchanged or networked to support decision-making regarding a built asset. BIM software is used by individuals, businesses and government agencies who plan, design, construct, operate and maintain buildings and diverse physical infrastructures, such as water, refuse, electricity, gas, communication utilities, roads, railways, bridges, ports and tunnels.
The Building Research Establishment (BRE) is a centre of building science in the United Kingdom, owned by charitable organisation the BRE Trust. It is a former UK government national laboratory that was privatised in 1997. BRE provides research, advice, training, testing, certification and standards for both public and private sector organisations in the UK and abroad. It has its headquarters in Garston, Hertfordshire, England, with regional sites in Glasgow, Swansea, the US, India, the Middle East and China.
A Publicly Available Specification or PAS is a standardization document that closely resembles a formal standard in structure and format but which has a different development model. The objective of a Publicly Available Specification is to speed up standardization. PASs are often produced in response to an urgent market need.
Robert James Mair, Baron Mair, is a geotechnical engineer and Emeritus Sir Kirby Laing Professor of Civil Engineering and director of research at the University of Cambridge. He is Head of the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC). He was Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, from 2001 to 2011 and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge from 1998 to 2001. In 2014 he was elected a vice president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and on 1 November 2017 became the Institution's president for 2017–18, its 200th anniversary year. He was appointed an independent crossbencher in the House of Lords in 2015 and is currently a member of its Select Committee on Science and Technology.
David Douglas Cleevely, CBE, FREng, FIET is a British entrepreneur and international telecoms expert who has built and advised many companies, principally in Cambridge, UK.
The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust is an independent, endowed charitable trust based in Scotland that operates throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Originally established with an endowment from Andrew Carnegie in his birthplace of Dunfermline, it is incorporated by a royal charter and shares purpose-built premises with the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Carnegie Dunfermline Trust, and the Carnegie Hero Fund Trust.
All European countries show eGovernment initiatives, mainly related to the improvement of governance at the national level. Significant eGovernment activities also take place at the European Commission level as well. There is an extensive list of eGovernment Fact Sheets maintained by the European Commission.
Interxion is a European provider of carrier and cloud-neutral colocation data centre services. Founded in 1998 in the Netherlands, the firm was publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange from 28 January 2011 until its acquisition by Digital Realty in March 2020. Interxion is headquartered in Schiphol-Rijk, the Netherlands, and delivers its services through 53 data centres in 11 European countries located in major metropolitan areas, including Dublin, London, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and Madrid, the 6 main data centre markets in Europe, as well as Marseille, Interxion’s Internet Gateway.
Paul Dring Morrell is an English chartered quantity surveyor, former senior partner of Davis Langdon, and from November 2009 to November 2012 the UK Government's first Chief Construction Adviser.
Richard Gilbert Saxon CBE is an English architect. He was chairman of Building Design Partnership (BDP), chairman of BE, a vice-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (2002-2008), Master of the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects (2005-2006), president of the British Council for Offices (1995-1996) and Chairman of the Joint Contracts Tribunal. He was awarded CBE in 2001 for services to British architecture and construction.
The Government Digital Service is a unit of the Government of the United Kingdom's Cabinet Office tasked with transforming the provision of online public services. It was formed in April 2011 to implement the "Digital by Default" strategy proposed by a report produced for the Cabinet Office in 2010 called 'Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution'. It is overseen by the Public Expenditure Executive. GDS is primarily based in the Whitechapel Building, London. Its CEO is Tom Read.
The cyber security community in the United Kingdom is diverse, with many stakeholders groups contributing to support the UK Cyber Security Strategy. The following is a list of some of these stakeholders.
The Building Information Modelling (BIM) Task Group was a UK Government-funded group, managed through the Cabinet Office, created in 2011, and superseded in 2017 by the Centre for Digital Built Britain.
The Open Identity Exchange (OIX) is a membership organisation that works to accelerate the adoption of digital identity services based on open standards. It is a non-profit organisation and is technology agnostic. It is collaborative, and works across the private and public sectors.
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of detailed practices for IT activities such as IT service management (ITSM) and IT asset management (ITAM) that focus on aligning IT services with the needs of business.
The Henry Royce Institute is the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation. Its vision is to identify challenges and to stimulate innovation in advanced materials research to support sustainable growth and development. Royce aims to be a "single front door" to the UK’s materials research community. Its stated mission is to “support world-recognised excellence in UK materials research, accelerating commercial exploitation of innovations, and delivering positive economic and societal impact for the UK.”
Transforming Infrastructure Performance is a British government report on the UK construction industry. Issued by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority in December 2017, its aim is to improve productivity in the sector and make savings of £15 billion per year. It proposes to do this by increasing innovations like off-site construction and new digital technology, improving government procurement procedures, and improving integration and collaboration. It is seen as a welcome initiative by the industry, and early implementation of its aims has been incorporated into the water industry's 2019 price review.
The Infrastructure Client Group (ICG) brings together the UK’s most progressive economic infrastructure clients in partnership with government and industry. It's key purpose is to lead the acceleration of the improvement and alignment in the delivery and development of UK infrastructure for the benefit of the economy, society and the environment. The ICG fulfils its role to contribute to a people-focused, system-based view of infrastructure by: benchmarking, sharing and adopting best practice in the development and delivery of infrastructure programmes and projects and providing a single route to and from government and industry on behalf of economic infrastructure clients.
Mark Timothy Jon Enzer, OBE, is a British engineer. He is the CTO of consultancy Mott MacDonald and former head of the National Digital Twin Programme at the Centre for Digital Built Britain.
HALO Urban Regeneration, known simply as The HALO, is a Scottish business innovation park, urban regeneration and business start-up support company, founded, based and headquartered in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, Scotland. The HALO Urban Regeneration was founded by entrepreneur Marie Macklin CBE in 2006 as HALO Urban Regeneration Company Ltd., having announced the project a few years prior to official funding and creation of the HALO Kilmarnock.
