Is complying with the RIBA Plan of Work 2013 stages too hard for you?

The RIBA Plan of Work 2013 is an eight-stage building design and construction process for UK professionals.

It is a guide for architects, engineers and construction professionals to design high quality buildings. It offers a clear standard that companies can use to guarantee the quality and thoroughness of their building designs.

Currently it is time-consuming to fulfil the criteria at each stage, as the processes involved are still manual. Kreo aims to change this by speeding up most of the processes involved, or setting the project up to become easier to manage in the future.

How Kreo aligns to the RIBA Plan of Work 2013

Kreo helps anyone create a detailed Building Information Modelling (BIM) design for a new residential or office building quickly and easily. The level of development in BIM makes it possible to carry out a more thorough analysis than previously possible at the start of planning a building investment. Having a BIM model from the start allows you to build a strategy to a much higher degree of accuracy.

Kreo’s easy-to-use interface, cloud-based access and fast processing speed should make every stage of RIBA easier to access. Using advanced technology such as Kreo helps organisations achieve the tasks within each RIBA stage effortlessly.

RIBA Stages 0 & 1

According to the RIBA Plan of Work 2013, building projects should start by creating a Strategic Definition, Preparation & Brief. The client will decide at this point on the project's feasibility so these are the most important stages to get right. The tasks within each stage are hard to fulfil, as they are time-consuming, involve a lot of people and a lot of organisation.

Summarising the tasks within these stages, this is how Kreo makes the work faster and easier:

• Core Objectives: Kreo lets you create multiple BIM models at a record speed, giving you most of the information you need for your business case, strategic brief and project objectives.
• Procurement: Kreo supports multiple procurement methods, including design-bid-build, design-build and management contract. As Kreo is easy to use and cloud-based, so anyone can be invited to join the project at any time.
• Programme: By automating BIM, you can immediately establish the project programme and review it throughout these stages.
• Town Planning: As the model is in a common data environment (CDE), you can access reference files, standards and experts’ notes in one place and share with anyone you need to. It is cloud-based, easy to use and visually appealing, making pre-application discussions smoother and less expensive.
• Suggested Key Support Tasks: By making your project execution plan instantly visible, your communication strategy becomes inextricably linked by default. Kreo automatically adheres to common standards and creates your design responsibility matrix for you.
• Information Exchanges: This is made faster than ever before with Kreo’s CDE, permission management and real-time activity tracking.

RIBA Stages 2, 3 & 4

The Concept Design, Developed Design and Technical Design usually involve the work of several parties. This means that when a design change is made, the time to achieve each of these project stages will grow exponentially.

While BIM in a CDE is becoming more common at these stages, the project is usually likely to have multiple separate designs at each stage. When they are not interlinked, this means many parties making changes to different models. This produces a likelihood for error, especially when considering cost and schedule implications of the build.

Kreo passes through the three RIBA project stages simultaneously by creating one integrated architectural and structural BIM model. As they are interlinked, any changes to one model will be reflected in all models. Kreo's artificial intelligence stops anyone from creating errors in the model, such as structural errors in the architectural design. This reduces the need for back and forth between experts. Time spent on design changes can be used for suggestions to the building's aesthetics or sustainability, rather than correcting mistakes.

RIBA Stage 5, 6 & 7

The Construction stage is where the building contract is administered and design queries are made. The output of this stage is the ‘as-constructed’ information.

By creating a full BIM model from the start of a project, the contractor can easily access the 'as-constructed' information. This will speed up the construction stage and ensure a high level of site efficiency, reducing health & safety risks and increasing sustainability. By setting up your model in Kreo, you are setting up your project for a successful build.

The Handover and Close Out and In Use stages are important to find out a project's success. The precise nature of BIM gives the project owner a blueprint for a "digital twin" of the building. This in turn can be kept for the building's owner, enabling better facilities management.

Better Building Design

By adhering to all stages of the RIBA Plan of Work 2013, project owners get better calculations of cost and schedule right from the start. With Kreo's AI, you can fully achieve most of the tasks up to RIBA Stage 4, without the need for extra people or time. This level of accuracy and detail in building design will eventually become normal. In the meantime, the few who take advantage of AI will reap the rewards by making building projects more efficient and construct better quality buildings.