ISO 19650 talks about information management. It doesn't mention email.
ISO 19650 is the international standard for managing information across the lifecycle of a built asset. It covers how data should be structured, shared, secured and maintained from design through to operation. AEC firms across the UK and globally are working towards compliance and with parts 1, 2 and 3 being revised for republication in 2026, the standard is only becoming more central to how the industry operates.
But here's the gap: ISO 19650 focuses on structured data within a Common Data Environment. Models, drawings, specifications, reports. It doesn't address the unstructured correspondence where most project decisions actually happen. Email.
Where project decisions really live
Think about how work actually flows on a construction project. The BIM model captures the design intent. The CDE holds the documents. But the conversation about why a structural detail changed, or whether a material substitution was approved or what the client agreed to on a call last Tuesday? That's in an email thread. Usually, in one person's inbox.
As we found in our Delivering Project Success research, senior leaders are continually frustrated when they're not kept in the loop and lack visibility into project status, especially when key information is buried in emails or scattered across systems.
You'll recognize these:
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"When did we agree to this?"
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"Pete's left the business, so I'm coming in cold on this."
- "Forward me that email as I never received it."
Every one of those is a symptom of the same problem. The formal project information is managed. The correspondence that gives it context isn't.
ISO 19650-6 makes this more urgent
ISO 19650-6, published in early 2025, extends the series to cover health and safety information management across a building's lifecycle. Its author, Nick Nisbet, describes it as "a method for sharing the risk registers in a project, which are a requirement of the CDM Regulations, in a way that the participants in the project can contribute to."
Critically, ISO 19650-6 also provides a key tool for managing the golden thread of information required by the Building Safety Act. It structures information about risks, incidents and mitigations so that everyone on a project can access it.
Where does that risk information often first surface? In an email from the site team. In a message from a subcontractor, flagging a concern. In a thread between the principal designer and the structural engineer. If those emails aren't captured, classified and accessible alongside the formal project records, the golden thread has gaps in it.
The 40-year problem
Joanne Devonald, Senior Global Manager of National Information Services at Ramboll, put the stakes plainly:
"We need to have access to all of this information related to any specific project in 40 years. You can more or less guarantee that the person who wrote that email is not going to work here, but we will still have their emails."
Forty years. That's the retention reality for firms working on major infrastructure and building projects. ISO 19650 gives you a framework for managing structured project information over that timeline. But without a way to capture and file the email correspondence alongside it, you're keeping half the record and hoping nobody asks about the other half. Joanne's team at Ramboll closed that gap:
"Nobody has lost a single email that I've sent in the last 14 months because we have a shared file where all of our department's emails go into. I just press send and file, and everybody can see what I'm doing or where a project is at. No one asks chasing questions anymore because their files are where they are supposed to be."
Closing the gap between structured and unstructured information
ISO 19650 compliance is essential. But compliance with the standard alone doesn't guarantee that your project records are complete. The standard manages the structured half. Email is the unstructured half, and it's where the context, the reasoning and the accountability trail live.
Ideagen Mail Manager bridges that gap by filing project emails from Outlook into your existing folder structures, using machine learning to suggest the right location. It works inside the tools your teams already use, so adoption happens through removal of effort rather than addition of it.
If your firm is working towards ISO 19650 compliance, or already there, it's worth asking: is your email keeping up with your information management ambitions or quietly falling behind.
