ISO 19650 co-author David Churcher has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2021 for services to construction.
He told BIM+: “I am very surprised to get such an award, but of course thrilled. I am also really pleased that the work to promote and support information management and BIM in the built environment sector continues to be recognised.
“I think [the honour is] primarily for my work over the last 10 years to support the development of information management processes across the whole asset lifecycle, initially for the BIM Level 2 standard and now for the UK BIM Framework.”
Churcher, director of Hitherwood Consulting, was part of the authoring team for PAS 1192-2 and was lead author of PAS 1192-3. He then became part of the UK’s core team in the ISO/CEN Working Group and was responsible for authoring ISO 19650 Part 1. He worked alongside UK BIM Alliance chair Anne Kemp, who chaired the group, and Paul Shillcock, who authored ISO 19650 Part 2.
“It took four and a half years to get consensus on Parts 1 and 2 of ISO 19650 and they were published at the end of 2018,” Churcher said.
Since then he has also authored ISO 19650 Part 3, working with the same ISO group, and edited the UK BIM Framework Guidance documents.
He noted: “Standards development is primarily a voluntary effort, and as can be seen from the timescales involved, it is not something that can be undertaken lightly.”
His work on ISO 19650 and the UK BIM Framework Guidance follows his earlier work at CIRIA and then at BSRIA where he was responsible for developing best practice, consensus-based guidance for the construction industry and its clients across a range of topics, including five editions of the BSRIA Design Framework for Building Services which has become a widely-used reference in the MEP sector.
