For the third time this month, a document controller is explaining to a package manager that S2 does not mean approved. She has the transmittal open on one screen and the information standard on the other. He is not being awkward. He has worked four jobs where S2 was what turned up the week before a trade started, and nothing came of it. She will probably lose this one too, and the drawing will be installed from.
A suitability code is a claim about permitted use. It tells whoever opens the container what the author is offering it for, and in the same sentence what they are not. That is why ISO 19650-1:2018 clause 12.1 asks for a status on every container, and why the UK National Annex to BS EN ISO 19650-2 supplies a standardised list rather than leaving each project to improvise one.
Most of the industry treats the letter as a progress stamp, a filename suffix, or a folder costume. The international text never invented S2; it invented the job S2 does — a status the next person is forced to see. The S codes and the A codes are the UK way of doing it. Memorising Table NA.1 buys little. An agreed list that can stop a plot, a buy or an issue is the whole of it.
Status, state and revision are three different fields
They get collapsed into one habit, usually by people who are busy rather than careless.
A CDE state is where the container sits in the managed process: work in progress, shared, published, or archive. A revision is which edition this is. A status — suitability, in UK speech — is what anyone who opens it is allowed to do with it.
So the code and the state have to agree, or neither is a fact. S1 can only live in Shared. An A4 the originator is still editing is not published, whatever letter it carries. S0 in a Published folder is the same contradiction pointing the other way.
PAS 1192-2 put suitability in the filename. ISO 19650 moved it into metadata so the unique ID does not have to change every time the permitted use changes. Projects that still type _S1 into the name, then forget to retype it, have hidden the status in the one place a plotter will never force anyone to read.
What each S code lets you do, and what it stops
The wording below is the 2018 National Annex as the UK BIM Framework’s Guidance Part 2 reprints it, with the 2021 revision flagged where the two disagree. A project may expand the list, or drop codes from it, if the project’s information standard says so — ISO 19650-2 National Annex NA.4.2 is explicit about that. What it may not do is leave the recipient to guess.
S0 — initial status / work in progress. Assigned by the task team. The container is not yet suitable to be shared outside that team, and the revision and version are preliminary. The 2021 annex describes the same fact in plainer English: information developed within a task team. S0 is a keep-out sign rather than a first-issue badge. If the package manager can download it and plot it for the gang, you are not running a WIP state; you have a cupboard with a label on the door.
S1 — suitable for coordination. Shared, non-contractual, preliminary revision. Recipients may use it to understand or advance their own deliverables in a coordinated way. They may not buy from it, price a variation from it as though it were the issued set, or build from it. The guidance expects this on geometrical models more often than on sheets, though the code can sit on any container. The characteristic misuse is federating S1 models and treating the clash view as an instruction.
S2 — suitable for information. Shared, non-contractual. The author is offering it so others can see it — reference, context, a dilapidations report, a pack of site photographs — not so they can act on it as an approval or an issue. The 2021 annex adds the word “reference”; it does not turn the file into an instruction. The characteristic misuse is the argument our document controller keeps losing, and it ends in adjudication: the drawing is S2, the email says “latest”, the subcontractor installs.
S3 — suitable for review and comment. Shared, non-contractual. Recipients may review the contents against the information requirements and send comments. They may not procure materials, agree costs, or construct the works — the UK BIM Framework states that prohibition in those words. An S3 general arrangement that leaves Shared as a WhatsApp image and arrives on a trestle as “the current set” is not a communication failure. It is a status failure.
S4 — suitable for stage approval (2018) / review and authorisation (2021). Still Shared, still non-contractual, still a preliminary revision. The 2018 description limits use to stage-approval activity, the hoped-for outcome being that the container meets the stage requirements. The 2021 revision names the actor: S4 is the lead appointed party’s review and authorisation of the information model. Client acceptance is a different letter — S5 in 2021, or an A code once Published. If your BEP treats S4 as “the client has signed”, the codes have been mixed. Write down which annex you are on.
S5 — the letter that changed sides. In the 2018 annex, S5 is withdrawn. In the 2021 annex, S5 is appointing-party review and acceptance: the client-side counterpart of S4. Teams that inherited a 2018 list and “brought S5 back” as a local convenience have reinvented a letter the 2021 annex had already reoccupied with a different owner. Two projects on one campus can then mean opposite things by the same code, which is the sort of detail that turns up in a witness statement.
S6 — suitable for PIM authorisation (2018 only). Shared, preliminary. Limits use to the lead appointed party’s authorisation of the project information model, under ISO 19650-2 clauses 5.7.1 and 5.7.2. It is not a construction issue. If the model is rejected but this container does not need amending, it stays at S6; if the container itself has to change, it goes back to S0. The 2021 annex withdraws S6, because teams could never keep it distinct from S4 and S7.
S7 — suitable for AIM authorisation (2018 only). Shared, preliminary. Use is limited to authorisation of the information model for handover — Plan of Work stage 6, with facilities and asset management as the audience. S7 does not mean as-built; it is the request for that authorisation. The 2021 annex withdraws it, and published as-constructed intent moves onto an A code the project’s information standard has had to define.
S1 to S3 are the everyday Shared codes you see all through a work stage. S4 — and, in the 2018 list, S6 and S7 — belong at the end of a stage or at a formal exchange with the appointing party. Working the run like a volume knob, S1 early, S3 later, S6 when somebody upstairs gets impatient, is less a workflow than a mood.
| Code | 2018 meaning | 2021 meaning | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| S0 | Initial status / work in progress | Information developed within a task team | WIP |
| S1 | Suitable for coordination | Same | Shared |
| S2 | Suitable for information | Same, adds "reference" | Shared |
| S3 | Suitable for review and comment | Same | Shared |
| S4 | Suitable for stage approval | Lead appointed party's review and authorisation | Shared |
| S5 | Withdrawn | Appointing-party review and acceptance | Shared |
| S6 | Suitable for PIM authorisation | Withdrawn | Shared |
| S7 | Suitable for AIM authorisation | Withdrawn | Shared |
| A1–An | Authorised and accepted for stage n | Same; purpose defined by the project's information standard | Published |
| B1–Bn | Partial sign-off | Partial authorisation or acceptance | Published (preliminary) |
| CR | As-constructed record | Withdrawn — folded into an A-code | Published |
The A codes describe a published purpose, not a gold star
A1, A2, … An are Published, contractual revisions. The letter means authorised and accepted. The number is not a quality score. In the 2018 annex, and in Guidance Part 2, n is the project stage the accepted container belongs to. A2 is authorised and accepted concept design, which becomes reference information for stage-3 WIP; A3 is authorised and accepted for stage 3. The container has left Shared, and may be relied on for the purpose the stage, and the project’s information standard, actually named.
That last clause is why the 2021 annex exists. A published status does not, by itself, say why the container was issued; the project’s information standard has to define the reason. A common and legitimate local rule is that A4 means authorised and accepted as suitable for construction, and A5 means authorised and accepted as a construction record. If your standard never wrote that sentence down, A4 does not mean “build this”. It means “accepted at stage 4”, which is a different instruction.
Two neighbouring codes get dragged into the same arguments.
B1, Bn are partial sign-off (2018), or partial authorisation or acceptance (2021). Preliminary revision, not a contractual one. Comments remain outstanding. Treating a B code as an A code is how a “yes, but” arrives in a claim file dressed as an issued set.
CR, in the 2018 annex, is the as-constructed record document — Published, contractual, typically arriving after an S7. The 2021 annex withdraws CR so it does not duplicate an A code. If you still use CR, say so in the information standard. If you have moved to A6 for handover, say that. Silence is how two registers end up disagreeing about whether the asset exists.
An A-code container the originator can still edit without a new revision has not been published, whatever the letter on the front says.
The misuse patterns that end in disputes
None of these need a villain. They are mechanical, and most happen on well-run jobs.
The shop drawing that became a construction drawing. A fabricator issues an S2 or S3 shop drawing for coordination or comment. Someone plots it, or forwards the PDF, and the code does not travel with it. Site installs. Months later the claim file holds the PDF but not the status, and the argument is no longer “was it coordinated?”. It is “what was this file for, on that date?”
Everything is S2. The register is complete. Every shared container says suitable for information. The field has been filled in, so the BEP has been complied with. And nothing downstream has ever been refused because of a code. That is decoration. A code becomes a code the day it changes what happens next.
Filename folklore. _S1 in the title, a spreadsheet column running a week behind, a title-block letter that does not match the CDE metadata. The plotter prints the sheet; the metadata stays in the library. In a dispute, the contemporaneous document is the print in the trailer.
State and code disagree. S0 sitting in Published. An An still checked out to its author. Shared and Published copies of the same revision carrying different letters. The system stores the contradiction happily. The adjudicator will pick whichever copy was acted on.
A means build. The team reads any A code as issued for construction, because Published sounds like permission to pour, and stage-2 acceptance gets used as a construction issue. The 2021 annex was rewritten to stop that inference. Projects that never defined the A-number in their information standard are still making it.
Annex mix. The BEP cites ISO 19650. The register still offers S6, S7 and CR. The client’s information standard uses the 2021 S4 and S5, and has no CR. Nobody has written down which Table NA.1 is in force, so S5 means “do not use” on one side of the table and “client acceptance” on the other.
The download button does not care. Anyone with access can take an S3 container, strip the wrapper off, and send it on. If the issued-set process cannot refuse a container whose status still says review, suitability is not being managed; letters are being stored.
Status changed, revision did not. A coordinator “updates the suitability” from S3 to A4 on the same revision because the comments were “minor”. The physical sheet, if it carries a stamp, now disagrees with the history. The audit trail says the accepted file is the commented file, and that is the record a delay claim will ask somebody to explain.
A test a document controller can run on Monday
No consultant required.
- Open the project’s information standard, BEP, or information protocol. Write down the status-code list it actually publishes, and which National Annex — 2018, 2021, or a project-specific expansion — that list comes from. If there is no list, that is your result.
- Pick ten containers that left WIP in the last month. For each: does the status sit on the agreed list; does it match the CDE state; does the title block match the metadata; can the file be downloaded or plotted regardless of the letter?
- Ask whoever plots for site whether they look at the code before they print. Write the answer down. A shrug is a finding.
- Find one recorded case where a code blocked a use — a hold, a refused transmittal, a request for a new revision. If you cannot find one, the codes are badges.
The longer method, with scores, is the ninety-day information maturity audit.
Most of the repair is a writing job, far cheaper than the arguments it prevents. The appointing party goes first: name the annex in the EIR and the information protocol, say which Table NA.1 is in force, and define every A-number you intend to use — what A4 permits, what A5 permits, whether CR survives. An afternoon for somebody who knows the answer, and it belongs before the first exchange, not in an adjudication two years later.
The lead appointed party then makes the letter bite. Configure the CDE so a container whose status does not permit a use cannot be released for it — which costs configuration time and, on some platforms, a licence tier you are not paying for, so budget it rather than pretending the standard implements itself. Put the annex reference and the A-number definitions on the face of the transmittal, so the code travels with the PDF. At tender, ask the supply chain which annex their template BEP cites.
Then give the document controller written authority to refuse a plot on the strength of a code, and back her the first time she uses it. That costs nothing and is skipped most often. Until somebody senior will lose an afternoon to it, she keeps having the same conversation, and the S2 drawing keeps getting installed.
Read next: The four CDE states: work in progress, shared, published, archive, Naming information containers so the convention survives contact with site, Everyone says they have a CDE. Most have a shared drive with permissions..