The General Office of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development recently issued a notice to launch a pilot program for full-lifecycle digital management reform of construction projects in Tianjin and 26 other regions. The initiative aims to accelerate the establishment of a working mechanism for data aggregation, integration, and business collaboration across the entire lifecycle of construction projects; connect the approval and supervision data chain spanning design, construction, acceptance, and operation and maintenance; promote management process reengineering and institutional restructuring; and form replicable and promotable management models, implementation paths, and policy and standards systems, thereby playing a demonstration and leading role in comprehensively advancing full-lifecycle digital management of construction projects and promoting high-quality development in the construction sector.

The notice specifies that the pilot will run for one year starting in November 2023 and will focus on seven tasks. Among them, four tasks are mandatory: advancing full-process digital application and approval, establishing a coding and mapping mechanism for individual buildings, establishing a full-lifecycle data collection and sharing mechanism, and improving the hierarchical data sharing mechanism. The other three tasks—advancing full-process digital management of construction project drawings, promoting BIM (Building Information Modeling) submission and intelligent assisted review, and driving innovation in digital management models—can be selected independently by pilot regions, which may also expand the pilot content according to their pilot objectives.

The notice requires improving the functions of the construction project approval management system (hereinafter referred to as the "project approval system") and advancing the standardization of application forms and application materials for construction project approval matters. It calls for strengthening the application of electronic documents and electronic seals, striving to advance paperless application and submission, and fully realizing electronic certificates for approval results.

Work procedures and operating guidelines for the division, coding, and mapping of individual buildings should be studied and established. When relevant approval matters are first handled before project commencement, each individual building should be assigned a unique full-lifecycle code in accordance with the "Standard for Unified Coding and Basic Attribute Data of Buildings" and linked to the project code. Spatial location information of projects and individual buildings should be obtained through departmental information sharing, digital application and submission, and other means. Subsequent approval matters, quality and safety supervision, and real-name management of construction workers all require verification of the project code, building unit code, and spatial location information.

Relevant systems for construction project approval, construction market supervision, real-name management of construction workers, quality and safety supervision, and building safety management should be promoted to interconnect and collaborate. Relying on building unit codes and spatial location information, an automatic collection and sharing mechanism for information in the approval, design, construction, acceptance, operation and maintenance stages of construction projects should be established to achieve comprehensive data sharing among systems. Using housing and municipal facility survey data as the base map, real-time collection and mapping of spatial location information of projects and individual buildings should be carried out, linked with relevant management information and approval information, and vectorized and map-based management of construction data should be realized.

In accordance with the "Data Sharing and Exchange Standard for Construction Project Approval Management Systems 3.0," connection with provincial and national project approval systems should be achieved first. The ministry will be supported in establishing a hierarchical verification mechanism for key approval matter information to ensure data credibility and security. In accordance with the ministry's deployment for system interconnection in the construction sector, and based on the principle of "one data source for one data item" and relevant data standards, relevant system data content should be adjusted and collected in real time into provincial and ministerial systems.

Digital drawings should be fully applied. Relying on the project approval system, construction drawing review system, and others, the whole-process application functions of digital drawings should be improved, enabling online business collaboration among participating entities and construction drawing review agencies for drawing review, modification, confirmation, and acceptance. Closed-loop management of "one set of drawings" should be implemented throughout project design, construction, completion, and archiving. Digital drawings should serve as the basis for departmental supervision and inspection, acceptance inspection, and quality and safety accident investigations, and provide access and retrieval services for relevant parties.

The application of BIM technology throughout the building lifecycle should be strengthened. A batch of projects should be selected to submit BIM results and undergo intelligent assisted review in design scheme review, construction drawing review, completion acceptance, and archive transfer. Standards for BIM result delivery and technical review should be improved, and innovative models and institutional mechanisms for BIM-based full-lifecycle approval and supervision should be explored.

Data integration and application should be deepened. Good practices should be formed in intelligent assisted approval of enterprise qualifications, intelligent control of illegal construction, digital quality and safety supervision, collaborative supervision of smart construction sites, digital archiving of project records, and joint credit rewards and punishments. Data potential should be tapped, and more digital management models should be explored in assisting government investment decisions, housing pre-sale supervision, and housing safety management.