Breaking through business and legal barriers of open collaborative processes based on building information modelling (BIM)

The involvement of various parties is inevitable due to the increasing complexity of modern building projects. In order to achieve life-cycle sustainability, open integration of information and know-how across different building phases and knowledge disciplines becomes very important. Open collaboration within the project organization requires integrated collaboration frameworks and tools. To a considerable extent, such a need can be met by the state-of-the-art Building Information Modelling (BIM). Unfortunately, there remain significant business and legal barriers. In contrary to the vision of an open and neutral BIM, conflicts of interests (e.g. providing and sharing knowledge) and local constraints can not entirely be avoided in a project organisation. The existing integrated procurement methods have not sufficiently addressed the key issues of open collaborative processes using BIM, such as: the changing roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders, the demand for new roles like a model manager, the legal status of the model and shared information, the new distribution of risks, and the performance-based commissioning and payment schemes. This paper aims at introducing an innovative process management approach to break through the business and legal barriers of open collaboration using BIM. As a research paper, the knowledge is partly based on InPro, an ongoing collaborative R&D project co-funded by the European Commission. A field survey among various stakeholders in Finland, France, Germany, Sweden, Slovenia, and the Netherlands was conducted to define the market viewpoint and current practice experience. The findings from both field and literature surveys are analysed to identify the business and legal issues of BIM in construction projects. A critical review over the existing BIM guidelines is presented. Subsequently, a new approach for BIM-wise process management is proposed together with the relevant business concept and take-up strategy. Finally, the necessary contractual terms for implementation and the direction for future research are discussed.