BIM Inertia: Contracts & Behaviours

Whilst Building Information Modelling (BIM) promises significant improvements in construction quality and efficiency, current contractual models do not encourage its use; indeed actively inhibit the collaboration at its core. To help bring BIM into the mainstream, it is claimed we need to re-craft existing contractual relationships to facilitate collaborative decision making and to equitably allocate responsibility among construction participants. This chapter looks at the case of Sweden and aims to identify and appraise observed hindrances to BIM collaboration and digital information stewardship. It presents an understanding of the connections between the commercial environment and contractual provisions that regulate the party’s business relationships and the resultant procedural and behavioural phenomena that can be viewed to thwart BIM collaboration and degrade the value or integrity of digital deliverables. The study then, in a more general context, asks what we can learn here that may have wider application through consideration of suitable BIM collaboration support mechanisms that may reduce or remove collaboration barriers, induce open, sharing behaviours and support the creators and users of digital information. Methods employed include a critical review of existing contract forms, synthesized with focus group interviews (FGIs) with representatives from diverse AEC disciplines. Results indicate that a number of systemic difficulties exist that can create an inertia which can be traced through behaviours and circumstances to contractual provisions. An understanding of such difficulties is presented and a consensus emerges on a number of key supporting mechanisms that may better facilitate meaningful early BIM collaboration and oil the wheels of communication without recourse to re-writing the rule-book.