Since the events of the Grenfell Tower fire on June 14, 2017, several organisations in the United Kingdom have been focused on ameliorating and improving building strategies in the UK – to ensure that such a tragedy would never be repeated.

But the issues of the built environment in the UK extend far beyond Grenfell; such is the premise of Dame Judith Hackitt’s 2018 Building a Safer Future report. The report outlines the concept of a ‘golden thread’; this was the suggestion that digital information needed to be effectively introduced and managed to enable decision-making through all stages of a building. The thread links all people and processes together as part of a broader strategy to make sure that built environment and building strategies within the UK are safer than ever.

But, how exactly does this function in practice? What does this mean for organisations?

The built environment has never been a more important issue for Data Clan, a Yorkshire-based solutions collective pioneering innovative ways to tackle issues and streamline organizational change. Data Clan is a multi-disciplinary research and consultancy firm with a passion for getting things done and a reputation for talking straight. Their track record certainly reflects it: CEO Chris Lees and Executive Director for Research Dr Rob Wray are working pro-bono on developing BRAC Golden Thread advice.

Data Clan utilises a cross-disciplinary approach to built environment and building challenges, enhancing outcomes like cost-efficiency, organisational cohesion, and solution efficacy, particularly in the context of safety-critical systems.

As Data Clan announces the “Age of Data”, they take a tech-focused approach to their new partnership agreement with digital transformation platform Cyferd. The partnership, which was signed this week, aims to combine digital innovation expertise and technology to help implement emergent Golden Thread requirements for the building industry.

Cyferd is innovating a digital transformation platform that enables users to streamline business processes through the creation of cloud-native, secure, no-code business applications. As they grow their platform, Data Clan’s extensive experience in the building industry will help them achieve solutions across the entire sector.

Chris Lees, CEO of Data Clan, said, “We are delighted to play our part in improving building safety, and this partnership allows us to apply Cyferd’s innovative platform to the existing and new challenges of digital asset information management. We see the potential to exploit the rapid deployment and lower total cost of ownership of the platform with clients in the housing and real estate sectors to meet both forthcoming legislative needs and current digital transformation ambitions.”

Greg Merten, SVP of Alliances and Partners at Cyferd, notes how critical Golden Thread policy is to linking aspects of the built environment.

“From the building owner to the construction worker, we can work with Data Clan to enable them to continue to innovate solutions to help connect communities with the buildings they’re intertwined in.”