GSA, the largest public real estate organization in the country, recently announced plans to require that all proposals from the A/E/C community for federal public buildings include provision for a building information model. Large private owners, such as Intel and General Electric, also are pushing hard for greater awareness and use of BIM technology by the A/E/C community. In October, the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT), an association of prominent construction owners of which GSA, Intel, and General Electric are members, announced that it is partnering with the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) on an initiative, called “3XPT Strategy Group,” to identify collaborative strategies permitting construction project participants to more fully implement and benefit from technological innovations such as BIM. 

Why such owner interest in project collaboration and optimal use of virtual design and construction technology? Simply put, owners want better value out of the design and construction process. Owners also want to stay competitive in the global marketplace, and they realize that the design and construction of facilities is another area of their operations requiring better efficiency and optimization to stay competitive.

BIM technology is not new, however. Certain kinds of engineered projects have been employing BIM technologies for years, but the broader design and construction community has been slow to adopt such technologies. AIA and AGC are trying to change that by developing materials to acquaint their respective memberships with the significance of BIM; in fact, AGC recently released a 48-page publication, titled The Contractor’s Guide to BIM (which is available from AGC at www.agc.org), to help contractors understand and “get ready” for the BIM transformation. Some commentators also are relating that, in order to realize the full potential of BIM technology, project relationships may need to be rethought and restructured, so they reflect a more collaborative philosophy and working relationship.

What is the interest of surety bond professionals in this industry discussion? Plenty! At some point in the not-too-distant future one or more of your contractor or specialty contractor clients may be required to participate in a major project utilizing BIM or related technologies. How will this impact that client’s existing risk management practices? What risks might that client knowingly or unknowingly be assuming in a BIM environment? Will related risks, such as standards of care, ownership of documents, costs of new hardware and software, and responsibilities for project communications, be accounted for sufficiently in the prime contract and in the subcontracts? Are your client’s existing insurance policies and surety credit sufficient for a design and construction environment utilizing BIM and related technologies? I do not presume to have even partial answers for these issues, but I am sure that they pose questions to which we should be devoting significant thought. 

Vigorous industry discourse will be necessary to approach and to find solutions for such questions, and surety bond professionals will have an important role to play. For example, there is, at present, a dearth of industry standards, in the form of standardized protocols and contract forms, to provide guidance. Through its involvement with the Construction Industry Contracts Coalition (CICC), which includes representatives from AGC, CURT and other industry organizations, NASBP has been and continues to be an active participant in one effort to develop such standards, working on drafts of the next generation of standard form agreements and other project documents that account for collaborative relationships and permit use of BIM technology among project participants. Much work remains, however, but rest assured that NASBP will be in the thick of the dialogue.