Tag: legal

Data Sovereignty and Autodesk Cloud Products like BIM360 (at AU2014 AUx)

Luke Johnson

Who owns and can potentially access your project data in the cloud? What are the legal implications? Many potential users of BIM360 and other products are concerned about this. Here is Scott Reese (Vice President, Cloud Platforms & Operations at Autodesk) speaking about this during a Q and A session at the Autodesk University 2014 Extension in Sydney, Australia on 10 November 2014.

The Legal Ramifications of BIM

Luke Johnson

Many legal questions are getting asked in and around the BIM community.  From “Who owns the model?” to “Who is responsible to track changes?”, we find ourselves in a new and somewhat scary world of legal consequences to our modelling action.

Some of these issues are captured in the following downloads and quotes, which in turn were taken from a post on Out-Law.com, a legal news site run by Pinsent Masons.

Downloads:
the publication of the BIM Protocol by CIC (15-page / 835KB PDF)
guidance on professional indemnity insurance issues relating to BIM projects (11-page / 478KB PDF)
‘Scope of Services for Role of Information Manager’ document (5-page / 299KB PDF)

Here are a few interesting quotes:
The Protocol published by the Construction Industry Council (CIC) is to be incorporated into existing construction contractual arrangements, although its terms can then be amended to set out particular rights around intellectual property ownership. It sets out the obligations that the different contracting parties would have to adhere to under the terms of individual projects…

“…it is a clear step forward and should accelerate the up-take of BIM across the UK construction industry, particularly on public sector projects.” 
 (quoting Infrastructure law specialist Khalid Ramzan of Pinsent Masons)

As might be expected, the definition of BIM is perhaps a little naive, or maybe just utopian?
A BIM system uses a computer generated model to collect and manage information about the design, construction and operation of a project centrally. It is especially useful where many parties, such as different sub-contractors, provide input on the same project. Any changes to the design of a project made during its construction are automatically applied to the model.

Read more:
BIM Protocol publication will drive ‘widespread adoption’ of the technology, says expert

EDIT: There are some more resources available over at REVIT Structure Learning Curve: The BIM Protocol, a Best Practice Guide for Professional Indemnity Insurance when using BIM

Free download of PAS 1192-2:2013 Specification for information management for the capital/delivery phase of construction projects using building information modelling at:

Heads-up via