How we received our BIM ISO 19650 certification

At the end of December 2022, we officially received our BIM ISO 19650-2 Lead Appoint Party certification. But why did we need this, and what are the advantages?

The standard was then translated to Hungarian in March 2021. We participated in the reviewing process of the standard, with the result that the Hungarian term for BIM was changed from “Épületinformációs modellezés” to “Építményinformációs modellezés”.

We started working towards getting the certification with a small project team. Our main motivation was that we had been using our BIM-based technology for a long time but it had not been formalized yet. Our other goal was to become more familiar with it. In order to reach this goal and to make progress, we received feedback and advice from our auditor.

We used the documentation of the standard for the preparation process, collected the expectations from the chapters of the certification and we checked how these processes currently work in our company and what written documents we could use to verify the process. Finding a certification body was not easy, as there is no such organization in Hungary that would certify companies working with BIM. Some of these companies took a long time to respond, some of them attempted to redirect us to another company. We finally decided to cooperate with the company Simple Certification. The members were incredibly helpful because they always informed us and provided a helping hand.

Following the agreement, events picked up. We received an agenda for the certification, which helped us rearranging and finalizing our documentation in about a month.

The audit consisted of two 6-7-hour online meetings. We talked through each point of the certification, and we had to prove to the auditor that our operation processes are appropriate. Basically, the content of the standard was regarded as a starting point, so it did not matter if particular positions were named or structured differently.

During the audit we had to select and introduce one finished and one ongoing project. The audit did not only cover BIM-related but also a wide range of topics including the bidding process, our risk analysis, the project closure and the IT solutions. The auditor assessed our application on 17 points and we were given some advice on where it would be useful, but not mandatory, to improve.

We received the official document on the 22th of December in 2022, which gives us great pride.

Author: Zsolt Oláh BIM studio leader