Contractual standards for BIM projects launched

A set of contractual standards to govern commercial relationships on BIM projects has been launched by the Construction Industry Council (CIC).

The BIM Protocol, backed by government under its construction strategy, will provide clarity on firms’ rights and liabilities when working on BIM projects.

It also explicitly defines the role of ‘information manager’ on a BIM project – the party that will lead in managing the flow of BIM information between parties.

The BIM Protocol’s contractual standards compliment the PAS 1192-2 suite of technical standards that was also launched last week.

Simon Rawlinson, chair of the legal, contracts and insurance working group of the BIM Task Group and CIC executive board member told Building the protocol will “give a sound commercial footing for the adoption of BIM in the UK.”

He said the protocol can be incorporated into existing primary contracts such as JCTs with “one or two amendments”.

He added the role of ‘information manager’ was not about creating a “stand alone role” or “creating an additional fee”.

He said the role was “about the management of information flows rather than design” and the holder of the role could change during the life of the project, for instance from design lead to contractor.

“This is about making it easier for employers to determine what they want,” he said.

BIM is a process for designing a building or structure collaboratively by using one coherent system of computer models.

The Cabinet Office, through the government’s construction strategy, has mandated the use of BIM on all government projects by 2016.

The protocol is available to both public and private sector clients and is available on the CIC website.