Uniclass

Uniclass 2015 is a unified classification system for all sectors of the UK construction industry. It contains consistent tables classifying items of all scales, from facilities such as a railway to products like anchor plates, flue liners or LED lamps.

Originally released in 1997, Uniclass allows project information to be structured to a recognised standard. This original version has now been heavily revised, to make it more suitable for use with modern construction industry practice, and to make it compatible with BIM (Building information modeling) now and in the future.

Led by the National Building Specification (NBS), experts from across the industry have developed the new system, known as Uniclass 2015. This significantly extends the scope of the previous version, and responds to industry feedback on the draft tables known as Uniclass 2, published by CPI in 2013.

Uniclass 2015 provides:

Uniclass 2015 has been restructured and redeveloped to provide a comprehensive system suitable for use by the entire industry, including the infrastructure, landscape, and engineering services as well as the building sector, and for all stages in a project life cycle.

Uniclass 2015 provides a means of structuring project information essential for the adoption of BIM Level 2. Information about a project can be generated, used and retrieved throughout the life cycle.

The initial classification work has focussed on the seven core tables that describe an asset required to support the Digital Plan of Work; additional tables covering Form of Information, Project Management and Construction Aids are also under development.

Uniclass 2015 has been carefully structured to be in accordance with ISO 12006-2 Building construction – Organization of information about construction works – Part 2: Framework for classification. This means that Uniclass 2015 is particularly suited to use in an international context, as mapping to other similarly compliant schemes around the world is streamlined.

Uniclass 2015 is divided into a set of tables, each accommodating a different ‘class’ of information. These can be used to categorise information for costing, briefing, CAD layering, etc. as well as when preparing specifications or other production documents.

These tables are also suitable for buildings and other assets in use, and maintaining asset management and facilities management information.

The suite of tables are broadly hierarchical, and allow information about a project to be defined from the broadest view of it to the most detailed. For detailed design and construction, the main starting point are Entities, which are composed of Elements; Elements are made up of Systems which in turn contain Products.

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