The much awaited 4th edition of BSRIA’s Design Framework for Building Services (BG 6) is now available. BG 6 has become the industry standard document for building services consultants and contractors to help them clarify and define the extent of their design activity and their design deliverables on any specific project. It is also used by clients and project managers to allocate design activity between members of a project team.
The design activity pro-formas and drawing/model definitions within the guide are used to support contract documentation and to encourage efficient collaborative working between building services designers, architects, structural engineers, contractors and other specialists.
The principal changes in Edition 4 reflect two key industry developments.
Firstly, the publication of the RIBA Plan of Work 2013 and the draft of the digital Plan of Work prepared by the BIM Task Group. These two plans, which align with one another, are based on a new, more holistic view of the project life-cycle. The RIBA Plan of Work 2013 has stages numbered 0-7 which can be flexed according to the needs of a specific project, whereas the previous RIBA Plan of Work used letters A-L. Many of the new stages align with the old ones, but there are some significant changes that have required the structure of the BSRIA pro-formas in BG 6 to be amended.
Secondly, experience of using BIM has progressed since the third edition was published in 2012. Chapter 3 of the guide has therefore been rewritten to reflect recent developments. In particular, the management of information and the project process for BIM Level 2 is now defined through PAS 1192-2:2013. This revised section of the guide updates the design activities relating to BIM, especially the production of building information models at different stages of design and the exchange of structured information with a project client.
BG 6 is available in pdf, hard copy and licensed versions (single or multi-site).