n recent years we have seen exponential growth in the pace of innovation for industries connected to the overall goal of improving building fire and safety for everyone. Operations and maintenance manuals have been no exception to this growth, with lots of updates, our favourite being the digitisation of manuals creating a whole new array of possibilities never seen before. But what changes can we expect for the rest of this year and 2023?

Good question! We have provided three key areas where we expect to see innovation below:

The first and most important change happening in 2023 is the official approval and release of the golden thread. The golden thread will transform building and fire safety for everyone, requiring a golden thread of information kept up to date at all times. If you have not heard of the upcoming golden thread legislation, we recommend reading our article explaining the latest definition and principles here.

Now that operations and maintenance manuals have gone digital, we expect other areas of information to start catching up too! Whilst home user guides and building user guides are already available in digital format; we believe innovation will begin increasing in momentum throughout 2023 and are planning to be a part of that.

Imagine moving into your new home and receiving a digital home user guide instead of the current paper-based folders; that we have all come across all too often. Digital HUGs and BUGs would improve longevity, and accessibility, with the potential to branch into much more such as real-time information similar to the golden thread of information that we currently achieve with our digital O&M manuals. The options for innovation are endless.

Being able to digitise your building information and create a golden thread is what we consider the forefront of innovation in the building industry. The elephant in the room is, how can we integrate the old paper-based O&M manuals into our digital platform so they can be golden thread compliant as well? 

Operance has been working hard behind the scenes to provide a solution to this problem and will have news coming very soon! Follow us on social media to keep track of any updates!

The above points are a small slice of the overall innovation that we expect to start happening throughout this year and 2023. Keep an eye out for our follow-up article later this year, where we will expand on the topics listed above and provide further insight into our expectations moving forwards.