Planning & documents
What is pre-construction information?
Pre-construction information is the information a client provides about the site and the project that designers and contractors need to plan the work safely — what is already there, and what is known about it.
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<img src="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/pre-construction-information/diagram.svg" alt="pre-construction information — diagram from BuildOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk/glossary/pre-construction-information">What is pre-construction information?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://buildoptix.co.uk">BuildOptix</a>
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</figure>It is about the existing situation rather than the intended one: services, ground conditions, asbestos surveys, structural information, restrictions on access and anything known about the building's history.
Its absence is what turns a planned job into an improvised one. A team that discovers a live service or an asbestos-containing material at the point of breaking into a wall is managing an emergency that information would have made a method.
It is a client duty, and 'we don't have it' is not a complete answer where the information is reasonably obtainable. Commissioning a survey is often the thing the duty actually requires.
What goes wrong in practice
- Issued as a folder of whatever existed, with nothing identifying what is relevant or what is missing.
- An asbestos survey of the wrong type for the work being done.
- Known site constraints held informally by the client's facilities team and never passed on.