Is the ISO 19650 just a BIM standard, a framework for managing models and files through a project? At FULCRUMHQ, we’ve always known it was something much bigger. We’ve built our platform on the belief that the standard was intended to manage the information itself — the graphical and non-graphical data amassed from concept and planning through to design, construction, and operations.
The international standards body appears set to agree, with the proposed ISO 19650 overhaul going to public consultation on 10 March as a Draft International Standard (DIS).
At first glance, it might look like a simple rewording exercise. It isn’t. Look at the proposed changes to the core acronyms we’ve used for years:
It suggests moving from Building Information Management (BIM) to Information Management (IM). But the real change runs deeper. This signals a decisive move away from “BIM as modelling” toward structured information production across the entire asset lifecycle.
For our clients, this isn't a pivot. It's a validation – because FULCRUMHQ has applied ISO 19650 this way from day one:
🔹 True Single Source of Truth - Information isn't just stored, it's published, versioned and superseded with rigorous revision control. Every state transition governed. Every prior version traceable.
🔹 Data Over Files - The value was never the container. It's the metadata, the asset parameters, the structured attributes that make information useful to a project team today and a facility manager five years from now.
🔹 The Full Asset Lifecycle - Information doesn't get abandoned at handover. It carries forward, matures and continues to serve the asset through its entire operational life.
Enterprise clients using FULCRUMHQ have been working with Information Production Requirements, Information Production Plans and Information Production Schedules for years. The terminology is new. The practice isn't.
Structured, lifecycle-wide information doesn't just make for good governance. It paves the way for true industrial AI benefits. It's the difference between AI as a pilot project and AI as a genuine enterprise capability across the built environment.
Within a single asset, consistently governed data in FULCRUMHQ enables predictive maintenance, anomaly detection and automated compliance checking. None of these are possible against a fragmented document store. Across a portfolio, the same standardisation surfaces pattern recognition at scale: performance trends, cost drivers and risk concentrations that no human team could find manually. And across asset classes such as roads, rail, commercial property, energy infrastructure. A common information framework means intelligence learned in one domain transfers directly to another.
AI is only as good as the information it runs on. Structured, versioned, continuously maintained across the full asset lifecycle is the prerequisite. ISO 19650, applied the way FULCRUMHQ has always applied it, turns out to be the foundation that makes it possible.
While the rest of the industry may scramble to redefine their workflows to meet these "new" IM requirements, for FULCRUMHQ and our clients, this is just a tweak of a knob. Our architecture already treats information as the primary asset.
As #ISO19650 matures from a BIM framework into a true Information Management standard, our clients are already there, realizing the true potential of their data.
The industry is finally catching up to the vision we've been delivering all along.
Interested in how FULCRUMHQ supports true information management across the asset lifecycle? Let's talk.