Contractual Perspective for BIM Utilization in Iran AEC Projects

AEC is a highly fragmented industry. This might lead to a lot of problems as managing several stakeholders is not an easy task. Establishing a professional relationship between parties requires a perfect contract management process. Digital technologies such as BIM can potentially improve the traditional contract management process. Therefore, this paper intends to explore the potential of BIM in contract management. First, a bibliometric analysis based on year, Journal, and keyword was done to determine the current trend of the literature. Then, the full text of the selected papers was inspected. The result has shown that BIM capabilities in the contract management process can be categorized into five sections: pre-construction activities, BIM appropriate contracts, BIM and intelligent contracts, BIM-based claim management, and information management. Then a semi-structured interview with industry practitioners and academicians was conducted to identify the country-specific situation of Iran's AEC industry. The results showed that Iran is moving toward implementing BIM in its projects, but the rights infrastructure should be put in place first.

Keywords:

BIM , Building information modeling , Smart contract , Contract management , AEC industry , Comprehensive review , Bibliometric analysis , Systematic literature review