BIM

*This article is posted with the permission of its authors, Ryan Miner and Dean Thomson, of Fabyanske, Westra, Hart & Thomson, P.A. It was originally published in the firm's Construction Law Briefing Paper, a publication of FWHT distributed to its clients and other industry professionals, in August of 2006. You can access all of the firm's briefing papers relating to a variety of construction law topics here. A New Era in Design The everlasting quest to exceed Owners’ expectations is driving innovation in the construction industry. Owners are demanding that complex projects be completed more quickly and cheaply. These demands, plus a desire to avoid claims, have led designers to think beyond two dimensional blue-prints and to develop three dimensional Building Information Modeling (BIM). This month’s Briefing Paper will focus on the legal issues facing designers, owners, and contractors who use this technology, but first, we’ll examine the developing state of the art that has led to these new methods. The concept of BIM is relatively simple yet revolutionary. The theory is that if every piece of data required to design and construct a project were entered and developed within a single online system, we could construct the project in the virtual world first. The system could create dependable 3-D models and add additional fourth and fifth dimensions of schedule and cost. Attaching cost estimates to various design and schedule options will allow the team to do cost-time-benefit analysis of different designs and construction sequences, almost instantaneously. The product of a team’s collaborative effort would include shop fabrication drawings, constructability analysis, structural models available in 2 and 3-D, energy and air flow analysis, mechanical and structural collision identification, as well as operation and maintenance reports. Basically, the model’s output would produce all the documentation that the team members would otherwise have to create in isolation and duplication, without the model.

I'm planning a more detailed post about Building Design + Construction's recently released 2006 White Paper on Sustainability (this year's is titled Green Building and the Bottom Line), but I wanted to briefly point out that item number ten (of ten!) in the editors' Executive Summary is a direct acknowledgement of the legal issues that LEED, BIM, and other green building technologies are starting to implicate. The editors also recognize that, unfortunately, very little scholarly attention has been given to this potentially enormous area of liability.

10. The legal profession needs to examine potential liability issues resulting from developers and owners failing to build to green standards. Will the time come when green building certification will be seen as a minimum standard? This is a question legal scholars must began to take seriously.

On page 61 of the White Paper,