Coulter BIM Information Management

Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) achieving BSI Kitemark certification for ISO 19650 is a notable development in the BIM Information Management space, and one that’s worth looking at with a bit of nuance.

I’ll start by saying this up front: I’m by no means an Autodesk fanboy. I have plenty of frustrations with Autodesk as a company, particularly around pricing and market dominance. But it is still genuinely positive to see one of the biggest players in the AEC software market placing clear emphasis on ISO 19650 and submitting their platform to independent certification.

That matters.

Why this certification is significant.

The BSI Kitemark is not a marketing badge that vendors can self-award. It requires an external assessment of whether a platform can support ISO 19650-aligned information management processes, including structured workflows, information states, approvals, auditability and traceability.

For years, most CDEs have simply claimed to “support ISO 19650” without much scrutiny. This certification moves ACC from assertion to assurance. It doesn’t guarantee that projects using ACC are compliant, but it does mean the platform itself is no longer the limiting factor.

That is a meaningful shift.

Potential impact beyond the UK

One of the more interesting side effects of this is the potential influence outside the UK.

ISO 19650 adoption in North America has been relatively weak compared to the UK, Ireland, parts of Europe and Australia. The US market has historically favoured proprietary or contract-specific approaches to information management rather than international standards.

Autodesk is an American company with enormous influence in that market. Seeing ISO 19650 taken seriously by Autodesk, and backed by formal certification, may help legitimise the standard further in the US. If ISO 19650 is embedded into the tools people already use, adoption becomes much easier than trying to push it as an abstract framework from the outside.

The LinkedIn criticism: folders vs metadata

I’ve already seen some criticism on LinkedIn around this certification, particularly focused on the fact that ACC uses folders, whereas platforms like Aconex lean more heavily on metadata-driven document control.

Personally, I find this criticism a bit pedantic.

No matter what CDE you use, good information management still depends on good management. A metadata-driven system can be just as badly misused as a folder-based one if teams are poorly trained, unmanaged or simply ignore agreed processes.

Folders versus metadata is not the real issue. The real issue is whether the platform allows you to enforce structure, naming, status, approval and access rules in line with ISO 19650 — and whether teams actually follow them.

My experience with Autodesk Construction Cloud

From my own experience, ACC is a perfectly decent CDE.

Like all platforms, it has strengths and weaknesses. But there are things it does well from an information management perspective:

File naming enforcement is a big plus. It forces teams to comply with ISO 19650 naming conventions at upload, rather than relying on post-hoc policing.

The separation between Shared and Published states works well and aligns neatly with ISO 19650 workflows.

Status metadata is generally clear and usable, supporting suitability and approval processes without too much friction.

Is it perfect? No.
Is any CDE perfect? Also no.

Adoption matters more than features

For me, the most important factor with any CDE is adoption.

You can have the most sophisticated metadata model, the most elegant workflows, and the most beautifully written BEP in the world — but if people don’t actually use the CDE properly, none of it matters.

The real enemy of good information management is not folders or metadata. It’s:

email attachments

parallel file stores

people “saving things locally for now”

teams dumping files into the CDE at the end of a stage

informal sharing outside agreed processes

If everyone actually uses the CDE consistently, most platforms can be made to work. And in my experience, ACC generally achieves that baseline fairly well.

A necessary note of caution

While I welcome this development from Autodesk, I’m still cautious.

I remain uncomfortable with:

constant price increases

subscription creep

and the sheer market share Autodesk now holds

No single company should have this much influence over how the construction industry manages its information. Certification doesn’t change that reality, and it doesn’t remove the need for genuine competition, interoperability and open standards.

In fact, the more market power a vendor has, the more important it becomes that they take standards like ISO 19650 seriously — and submit themselves to independent scrutiny.

Final thoughts

Autodesk Construction Cloud achieving BSI Kitemark certification for ISO 19650 is a positive step. It signals maturity, accountability and recognition that information management standards matter.

It won’t solve every problem.
It won’t fix poor behaviours.
It won’t remove the need for strong information management leadership.

But it does raise the floor.

And if this encourages wider adoption of ISO 19650 — particularly in markets where uptake has been slow — then that can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole.