10 Principles of the Golden Thread

The Golden Thread of Information is crucial for understanding a building's safety requirements and ensuring the safety of its occupants. The golden thread serves as a digital trail that is always accessible; it is where you should store your information digitally to efficiently record the life cycle of your building(s). To do this effectively, keeping on top of the storage and management of your data is key.

Dame Judith Hackitt’s ‘Building a Safer Future’ report, commissioned following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, recommended the implementation of a golden thread for higher-risk buildings as a tool for managing buildings as holistic systems to ensure safety throughout the design, construction, and occupation phases of a building. Having a robust golden thread of building information is now law through the Building Safety Act 2022. Within Part 4 of the Act, duty holders and Accountable Persons have a legal duty to create, obtain, store, and share documents and information about their buildings in a prescribed format. Whilst we await secondary legislation and guidance to define the specific requirements for the golden thread, there is still a wealth of useful information to get you started, such as the ten golden thread principles.

The Building Regulations Advisory Committee’s golden thread report (published back in 2021) defines the golden thread and its accompanying principles, which we have summarised below. Adopt these principles as practice across all your buildings, regardless of building height.

Simple to access
Make sure that your information is simple to access; the right people need to have the right information at the right time. If your information is easy to find and stored in a structured way (such as in a library system format), people will be able to find and extract that key information easily.

Culture change
One of the key elements of Dame Judith Hackitt’s report was culture change within the sector, which the golden thread will support through an emphasis on collaborative working. The golden thread requires increased capability and competency, alongside different working practices and updated processes. Think about your ways of working and specifically focus on your information management and control, also think about how you are evidencing your information.

Relevant and proportionate
A key objective of the golden thread is to make sure that building safety information is relevant. This is something you will need to develop and work on continuously, asking yourself, what does this mean? What do I believe to be relevant to the building? Review your information regularly to keep it relevant and up to date.

Understandable and consistent
The golden thread must be clear, understandable, and focused, presented in a way which can be understood easily and used by the relevant people. Again, think about how you present your information, for instance you could use a dashboard approach to visualise your data. Ensure the golden thread uses consistent terminology and standard methods throughout so that information is used effectively, which is especially useful for those working with multiple buildings.

Shareability
Format the golden thread so that it can be handed over easily in the future and can be maintained throughout the entire life cycle of a building. Anybody who needs the information, such as contractors, should be able to access it without hassle. Also consider how you share the key information with residents.

Accountable
The golden thread is important for recording any changes that take place such as changes to building updates, additions, deletions, data, and documents. It is therefore important that you can see any changes and who made them to drive accountability. This will provide a clear audit trail which demonstrates who did what, and when.

Secure
Make sure the golden thread is GDPR compliant where required, with protocols in place to protect any personal information and control access to it to maintain the overall security of the building and its residents.

Accurate and trusted
As the golden thread is a source of evidence to show how building safety risks are understood, it should be accurate, structured, and verified. Set out change control processes that show information updates and who should be verifying that the information is correct. You need to be able to capture accurate snapshots within the building at any point in time to easily see any changes made.

Residents feel secure in their homes
You need to provide residents with the relevant information to help them feel secure and assured that the building has been managed in the most effective way possible, always putting their safety first. Think about the Resident Engagement Strategy for the building; how are you going to provide information to your residents so that they can easily access it?

Single source of truth
The golden thread will bring together all relevant information in one place, so there is always a ‘single source of truth’ reducing the duplication of information and keeping things organised. This will also contribute to a new and improved working culture, where responsibility and accountability are paramount.

Need some more insight into what the golden thread is, and how you can plan and implement it?

Watch our 'Building Safety: Implementing the Golden Thread of Information' webinar on-demand here to gain a clear overview of the key golden thread documents and guidance, alongside an understanding of what you need to consider to meet your requirements. No matter where you are on your Building Safety Act journey, this webinar is perfect for anyone wanting to ensure they are implementing the best golden thread practices for building safety.