ISO 19650: the international standard vs the UK National Annex.

ISO 19650 defines the process. It deliberately does not hand you a fixed set of codes.

The international ISO 19650 series (Parts 1–6) sets out the information-management framework used worldwide: the Common Data Environment (CDE), roles and responsibilities, the exchange of information between parties, and the concept of information containers moving through defined states as a project progresses. This is the same underlying process wherever in the world it's applied.

ISO 19650-1 defines exactly four CDE states that every information container moves through:

• Work in Progress (WIP) — being developed by the originating task team, not yet shared
• Shared — released to other parts of the delivery team, for coordination, review, or comment
• Published — authorised for a specific contractual use (e.g. issued for construction)
• Archived — a permanent record of every container that passed through the CDE, for audit and traceability

What the international standard does not do is prescribe a specific coding scheme for any of this — no fixed "S1," "A4," or similar. Instead, it requires the specific codes, their exact meanings, and how they map onto project stages to be defined by each project's own Information Standard (part of the project's BIM Execution Plan). Outside the UK, this is normally where a country's own national guidance, a client's requirements, or the project team's own convention fills that gap — there is no single "international code set" to fall back on.

The UK adopted ISO 19650 with an additional, much more prescriptive layer on top — the National Annex.

BS EN ISO 19650-2 (the UK-published edition of the international standard) includes a UK National Annex, maintained by BSI in collaboration with the UK BIM Framework. It fills in exactly the gaps the international standard leaves open for UK projects: a seven-field container naming convention, a defined set of status/suitability codes, and UK-specific conventions for revisions and classification.

The Annex was significantly revised in 2021. The main changes to the status codes:

Source: UK BIM Framework, Guidance Part 2 — Parties, teams and processes for the delivery phase of the assets, Edition 6 (Feb 2021), §3.1.10.

The Annex is explicit that the numbered A-codes are not universally fixed — each project's Information Standard has to state what each one means. A commonly used example given in the official guidance itself:

• A4 — authorised & accepted as suitable for construction (RIBA Stage 4 outcome)
• A5 — authorised & accepted as suitable as a construction record (RIBA Stage 5 outcome)

That's an example, not a rule — a different project's Information Standard is free to assign A4/A5 differently, and by default the Annex bases its stage numbering on BS 8536 rather than RIBA, unless the project has explicitly opted into a different stage framework.

The practical upshot: the process is genuinely international. The specific codes most people associate with ISO 19650 — the S-numbers, the A-numbers — are a UK addition, not a universal requirement. A project run to the international standard outside the UK is following the same process, just with its own Information Standard defining the actual codes.

ViewTwo runs the UK National Annex codes by default, but doesn't assume every project needs them.

Working to the UK National Annex? Nothing to set up — ViewTwo's Status dropdown, printed legend, and Push buttons already use the current 2021 set (S0–S5 and A, with WIP / Shared / Published) out of the box. B codes are deprecated in the 2021 annex, so they aren't built in; add them in Settings if your project still uses them.

Working to the plain international standard, or a client's own Information Standard that defines its own codes? Open Settings → Project Status Codes in ViewTwo and define exactly the codes your project actually uses — your own list, or the UK set as a starting point with your own A-code meanings added on top (the National Annex itself expects those numbered A-codes to be project-defined, not universal — see Part 2 above). Whatever you define becomes that project's own code set: shown in the Status dropdown when pushing, in the printed Issue Sheet legend, and carried through to any custom Excel template you're using.

The same codes can be rolled out to your whole firm as the new default for any project that hasn't already set its own, and re-applied to a specific project later if your codes change — the same one-click mechanism ViewTwo already uses for sharing a custom Excel template firm-wide. See the Help page's Q&A for the full walkthrough.