The built environment should stop regarding the golden thread as a document exercise and treat it as the legislation intended: a reliable, living picture of building safety, says Brett King

As well as the regulator, several major industry clients were present, and we spent much of the conversation talking about digitisation, the golden thread and improving the flow of information across the lifecycle of higher-risk buildings.

Yet when questions were raised around structured data, AI and how technology could support the regulator itself, the room suddenly became far less certain.

That tension matters because the industry is currently being asked to deliver a digital golden thread without a sufficiently clear and consistent definition of what “good” actually looks like in practice.

“Across the industry, teams are second guessing expectations. Contractors are recreating information retrospectively. Asset operators are chasing records years after projects completed”

And that uncertainty is creating duplication everywhere.

The real challenge facing the industry is not simply whether information exists. In many cases, it already does. The problem is that information sits across multiple organisations, systems, consultants, contractors, spreadsheets, PDFs, inboxes and disconnected handovers. It is structured differently, presented differently and interpreted differently every single time.

The result is that huge amounts of effort are now going into rebuilding evidence packs during Gateway submissions and safety case reviews.

Across the industry, teams are second guessing expectations. Contractors are recreating information retrospectively. Asset operators are chasing records years after projects completed. Meanwhile, regulators themselves are managing growing volumes of inconsistent documentation while under pressure to improve approval timelines.

The concern is that we are trying to scale a fundamentally manual and inconsistent process.

This is where the conversation around technology needs to mature.

The answer is not simply “more software”. Nor is it digitising bad habits by turning paper into PDFs and calling it transformation.

More consistency needed

The opportunity is to create more consistency in how information is structured, connected, governed and evidenced across the lifecycle of a building.

Because once information becomes structured and traceable, technology starts becoming genuinely useful.

AI can help identify missing information. Image recognition can support defect identification. Pattern analysis can highlight inconsistencies across submissions. Automated workflows can reduce manual administration and allow regulators to focus human expertise where risk is highest.

But none of this works properly if the industry continues producing fragmented and inconsistent information.

Technology providers can help create the structure, consistency and traceability the industry is currently missing, but only if the sector aligns around clearer expectations of what a digital golden thread should actually contain.

That is why the next stage of the Building Safety Act cannot simply be about compliance. It must be about alignment – alignment between regulators, clients, contractors, operators and technology providers on what good information actually looks like.

If we get that right, we reduce duplication, uncertainty and rework across the entire system.

And, perhaps most importantly, we stop treating the golden thread as a document exercise and start treating it as what it was always supposed to be: a reliable, living picture of building safety.

Brett King is director of industry transformation at Procore. He previously spent 15 years working in major contractors.