BIM Adoption in Construction Contracts: Content Analysis Approach

Abstract

Building information modeling (BIM) is rapidly restructuring the construction industry, offering major enhancements in project outcomes. Although the emerging demands for BIM adoption are developing to become an industry norm, there are still uncertainties concerning the ability of the existing legal paradigm to fully incubate and promote BIM. Existing conventional construction contracts do not cope with the collaborative approach of BIM, causing potential contractual disputes to arise. These contractual disputes may become obstacles in the sufficient implementation of BIM and achieving anticipated productivity gains. This research aims to identify the provisions in the contract that should be addressed when BIM is utilized in the project. The research highlights the main contractual issues associated with BIM and explains the current treatment of BIM in contractual documents from standard forms of contracts and BIM protocols. The directed content analysis method is used to analyze three main standard forms of contracts that adopt BIM and have a different approach to drafting, covering multiparty agreement, partnering agreement, and standard biparty agreement. A comparative study is held between the contracts under investigation. The research presents and assesses the extent to which these standard forms of contracts deal with the contractual issues identified and accordingly the research proposes a drafting structure and framework for provisions that should be included in a BIM-based contract.