The creation of the Client Information Model starts with the organisation firstly identifying what information it needs in order to answer the operational decisions that it will have to make. PAS 1192:3 refers to these as Organisation Information Requirements (OIR’s). The British Standards Institute defines the OIR as:

Organisational Information Requirements ( OIR's)

Data and information to achieve the organisations objectives

The OIR involves establishing and categorising the information requirements to meet the needs of its asset management system. Organisations can have different needs for information. Identifying the OIR’s will require input from various departments within the organisation. Input will be needed in particular from the people involved in the strategic decision making associated with the asset portfolio and asset systems.

Before embarking on the journey of producing a digital asset information model an organisation will develop and publish a business case. One of the first steps will be to identify the potential benefits of creating a digital information model. In addition, the organisation should identify:-

• how much time and money will be needed to create a data and file store;
• how much time and money will need to allocated to identify the information that will be required;
• how much time and money will be needed to collect that data;
• what sort of people and how many people will be needed to conduct the work and provide governance;
• what sort of software tools will be used to extract data from the asset information model and create reports.

Activities to support the creation of Organisational Information Requirements are outlined in “Annex A” of PAS 1192-3