The back alley's bill so far: 3 weeks · See the bill
The right way
In Client Town, Grace, the asset manager, looks after the centres once they're built. She brings Stan's maintenance team and Lou from night security into the scoping meeting with Emilia, the client's information manager. Someone brings biscuits.
Stan: We'll need a way to get an escalator in and out. And a service yard a lorry can turn round in.
The maintenance team's know-how and the Precinct's 1986 drawings go into one short statement of what the new centre needs, agreed by the people who'll run it. The escalator route: page one.
Grace: The drawing says there's a fire door here. There's a cash machine.
The escalators wear out, as escalators do. The new ones come in through the service yard in sections, along the route kept clear for them. Done in a fortnight, and every shop stays open.
Now there is: The need, written down with the people who'll run the centre, and what the old Precinct has taught them.
Every job starts as a need, and the need is information too. The people who know most about it often run the old asset rather than write the business case. What stays in their heads is lost to the job. Writing the need down with them, and using the old Precinct's records, is the first piece of information management on the job, before any firm is appointed.
Before there's a tender, a bidder or a drawing, the job is a worry inside Client Town: the old Precinct is full and Janesfield's homes are coming. The people who know most about it aren't at Head Office; they're in the Precinct's plant room, with a notebook on a nail. This stop is about getting what they know out of the plant room and onto paper inside Client Town, because everything that leaves the town later starts here.
A note for the information manager: It's never too late to add the people who run the asset, and it costs less than a shop front.
Who runs the thing your next job replaces or extends? Have they been asked what they need, in writing?
| ISO 19650 says | Means | In the town |
|---|---|---|
| Organisational information requirements (OIR) | What the client's organisation needs to know to run its business and its assets well, whether or not a job is happening | What Client Town already knows, and needs, about its centres |
| Project information requirements (PIR) | What the client needs to know to make its key decisions about one particular job | The written need for the new centre, with the maintenance team's escalator route on page one |
| Appointing party | The organisation that commissions the work and receives the information | Client Town, with Emilia and Grace in the room |
Based on the ISO 19650 series: the ideas come from the standard; the plain-English wording, examples and advice are InfoTown's. ISO 19650 and its UK National Annex are © ISO and BSI. You'll hear the same language across the industry. Read more for free in the Information Management Initiative (IMI) Framework guidance from BSI and nima. For the full requirements, use the standard itself.