International Construction Law Review
SOME LEGAL ASPECTS OF BIM IN ESTABLISHING A COLLABORATIVE RELATIONSHIP
PROF DR M A B CHAO-DUIVIS
Professor of Construction Law, Delft University of Technology
1. Introduction
Construction projects involve the work of many different parties. It is widely acknowledged that communication problems are an important source of budget and time excesses as well as errors in design activities and execution. One new exciting way of communication is working with Building Information Modelling. Working with BIM has many different legal aspects. The contractual relationship between the parties will need to be adjusted. The usual general conditions have not taken into account the aspects of working in one model at the same time by different parties. Nor can they take this into account. Therefore, new contractual documents need to be developed which cover the relationship between the parties working in the BIM team as well as between the parties and the owner. The aspect to be highlighted in this paper is the question of liability. Then there are aspects concerning procurement law: is it possible to demand that tenderers work with BIM? What does this mean for tenderers who do not work with BIM? Can they be excluded? In this paper these aspects will be dealt with from a Dutch point of view.1
In this paper BIM is understood as:
This definition comes from the US National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) and seems to be widely accepted, in any case by lawyers, given the fact it was used in an article published in this Review.
2 The definition contains two important characteristics of BIM: the computable representation of a facility and the life-cycle approach. What is lacking in the definition is the fact that BIM makes it possible several people work at the same time in the computable representation. It is this aspect that causes most legal questions. I deliberately use the word questions and not
1 There are more legal issues to be dealt with, e.g., on the validity of the electronic signature, the obligations to retain information electronically, etc.
2 Kimberly A Hurtado and Patrick J O’Connor Jr, “Contract Issues in the Use of Construction Building Information Modelling” [2008] ICLR 262.
Pt 3] BIM and a Collaborative Relationship
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