A STUDY OF BUILDING INFORMATION MODELLING (BIM) IN CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to address the potential contractual concerns of adopting BIM in practice to construction industry and to validate the major contractual concerns, so as to facilitate the implementation of BIM in Singapore’s construction industry.

Four in-depth industry interviews were conducted in order to reflect the current industry practice and their concerns on the use of BIM.

Besides, NUS BIM Requirements version 1.0 and BCA BIM particular conditions version 2.0 was studied and analysed to validate the contractual concerns pointed out and serve as a guideline to address them.

All interviewees believe that it is challenging to each stakeholder’s role and responsibilities to the respective construction agreements in term of risk allocation and ownership of the model. And they agree that BIM should be well-addressed in contract documents by having an addendum or particular conditions for BIM project like what has been done for NUS projects.

It is suggested to consider the validated potential contractual concerns when implementing BIM to building projects and choose a good contract management strategy so as to fosters greater alignment of the interest of all project participants with the overall success of the project.