Abstract
Construction projects usually involve signing various contracts with specific billing procedures. In practice, dealing with complex contract structures causes significant problems, especially with regard to timely payment and guaranteed cash flow. Furthermore, a lack of transparency leads to a loss of trust. As a result, late or non-payment is a common problem in the construction industry. This paper presents the concept of implementing smart contracts for automated, transparent, and traceable payment processing for construction projects. Automated billing is achieved by combining Building Information Modeling (BIM) approaches with blockchain-based smart contracts. Thereby, parts of traditional construction contracts are transferred to a smart contract. The smart contract is set up using digital BIM-based tender documents and contains all of the relevant data for financial transactions. Once the contracted construction work has been accepted by the client, payments can be made automatically via authorized financial institutions. This paper describes the framework, referred to as BIMcontracts, the container-based data exchange, and the digital contract management workflow. It discusses the industry-specific requirements for blockchain and data storage and explains which technical and software architectural decisions were made. A case study is used to demonstrate the current implementation of the concept.
Highlights
The construction industry is going through constant changes and is managing the transition from the analog to the digital era
This paper presents the concept of implementing smart contracts for automated, transparent, and traceable payment processing for construction projects
As soon as an agreement has been reached, the linked digital contractual elements (BIM model, Billss of Quantities (BoQs), and billing plan) and the Smart Contract Configuration (SCC) are exported as an information container, referred to as the BIMcontracts Container (BCC), according to the Information Container for linked Document Delivery (ICDD) standard (Figure 1, 3 )
Summary
The construction industry is going through constant changes and is managing the transition from the analog to the digital era. Notwithstanding the great scientific interest in this area, there is widespread skepticism about the usability, acceptance, and readiness of the AEC industry for adoption of blockchain solutions [2,3,20] Regarding this matter, this contribution focuses on the question of how BIM can be combined with blockchain-based smart contracts to reach a practicable and enforceable solution for automated payment between clients and contractors. The main part of this paper describes the so-called BIMcontracts framework, the container-based data exchange, and the workflow of managing digital contracts It points out the industry-specific requirements for the blockchain and data storage and explains which technical and software architectural decisions were made. Balance, an application can be split into on-chain and off-chain components for storage and computational aspects [36]
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