8.6 The links between BIM and contracts

To search for references to BIM in a contract is not the most effective way of determining whether it supports the adoption of BIM in practice. It is more useful to assess whether contractual relationships and processes support BIM through provisions governing:

■ The impact of information management on agreed deadlines

■ Mutual intellectual property rights among team members

■ Access for team members to relevant information

■ Agreement of a format for information to ensure that team members can access the information, using open-source principles so that information can be shared between different platforms and software providers

■ Specifying responsibility for managing information, including creating and updating that information

■ Clear information requirements with levels of detail specified, including consideration of the information required at different stages of the building lifecycle

■ Clear requirements for verifying the information shared between team members

■ Clear requirements as to what information is to be provided at project completion and in what format.

Alignment of BIM with the relationships, processes and activities of collaborative procurement can be enabled through the use of multi-party project contracts such as PPC2000 or the NEC4 Alliance Contract, or through the use of two-party contracts that are connected by means of a contractual integrator. For example, the FAC-1 framework alliance contract has been used as a contractual integrator (or 'integrated information management contract') that connects multiple two- party contracts in relation to a project or programme of works by:

■ Creating BIM information transparency and reliability through collaborative systems of information exchange and team integration

■ Setting out agreed BIM deadlines, gateways and interfaces in a multi-party timetable, with flexibility to bring in BIM contributions from specialist sub-contractors, suppliers, manufacturers and operators through Supply Chain Collaboration

■ Supporting BIM with direct mutual licences of intellectual property rights

■ Providing for clash resolution through early warning and Core Group decision-making.