Our History

From BPIC to CPIC via CCPI

The Building Project Information Committee (BPIC) was set up on 17 February 1987 under the joint sponsorship of the RIBA, RICS, BEC and ACE which represented both CIBSE and ICE. ACE resigned in 1992 and engineering interests are now represented by CIBSE and ICE. BPIC was the successor to the Co-ordinating Committee for Project Information (CCPI) which was set up by the above sponsors to provide guidance on the preparation of project specifications and production drawings to overcome some of the inadequacies that have been found in practice which were seriously impairing the efficiency and quality of building work. The committee is now the Construction Project Information Committee (CPIC).

In 1987 CCPI published the following:-

• Project Specification – A Code of Procedure for Building Works.
• Production Drawings – A Code of Procedure for Building Works.
• A Common Arrangement of Work Sections for Building Works.
• Co-ordinated Project Information – A Guide with examples.

In 1993 BPIC published ‘Production Drawings – A Case Study’ to illustrate how CPI documents have been used on a live project.
The principles set out in these publications have been adopted in the preparation of the following Industry documents:-

• The Standard Method of Measurement for Building Works – 7th Edition
• The National Building Specification (NBS)
• The National Engineering Specification (NES)
• The PSA General Specification
• The Library of Standard Descriptions (HMSO)
• BS 8000 – Code for Workmanship on Building Sites (BSI)
• OPUS – Building Services Engineering Products Directory

The task of the Committee and its sponsors is to promote and maintain the widespread use of the above documents with the aim of reducing disputes and improving the efficiency of the building process.

It should be remembered that CPIC (formerly BPIC) was originally sponsored by a loan of £16,000 from its sponsors. Sales publications enabled this to be repaid within 9 months. Over the first four years an additional £32,000 was paid to sponsors and £5,000 was contributed towards the cost of a feasibility study on a Unified Classification for the Construction Industry which was subsequently developed into UNICLASS. Sponsors have also benefited from profits made by their bookshops on sales of CPI publications.

Uniclass was first published in 1997 and is now being developed in line with current practice. In 2003 a further publication Production Information: a code of procedure for the construction industry was produced. This supersedes the previous publications, Project Specification – A Code of Procedure for Building Works and Production Drawings – A Code of Procedure for Building Works.

Production Information was used as the basis for the Avanti project funded by the Dti. This project applied the procedures for collaborative working to live projects using consultants to work with the design teams. The Avanti consultants helped to put into place the procedures for using the available software for the design and construction phases of the projects. For the results of this work and details of savings achieved, see the Avanti website.

In 2007 BSI committee B555 published a new Code of practice for collaborative construction information. BS 1192:2007 Collaborative production of architectural, engineering and construction information – Code of practice, incorporates methods of working established in Production Information and refined in the Avanti project. This code also recommends the use of Uniclass as the classification system for the construction industry.