Construction Law

BIM in Construction Arbitration and Mediation?">Using BIM in Construction Arbitration and Mediation?

By Gary L. Cole AIA, Esq.

Inter­est­ing arti­cle HERE, and I agree, BIM has unique pos­si­bil­i­ties in arbi­tra­tion and medi­a­tion as an evi­den­tiary track­ing tool, but in dif­fer­ent ways.

In con­struc­tion arbi­tra­tion, com­par­ing a con­trac­tu­al scope of work — includ­ing one that evolved dur­ing a project — with the work com­plet­ed might pro­vide the par­ties and the arbi­tra­tor with a more objec­tive and empir­i­cal mea­sur­ing stick for com­par­ing the par­ties’ intent with a project’s completion.

In con­struc­tion medi­a­tion, espe­cial­ly in “eval­u­a­tive” medi­a­tion, the same holds, but the BIM find­ings also pro­vide the medi­a­tor with more tools to bring the dis­pute to set­tle­ment, main­ly when those find­ings are used with the mediator’s sum­ma­ry of the strengths and weak­ness­es of each par­ties’ case, as pre­sent­ed to each par­ty in con­fi­den­tial ex parte discussions.

How­ev­er, in both arbi­tra­tion and medi­a­tion, using a tool like BIM most effec­tive­ly still requires that coun­sel for the par­ties, the arbi­tra­tor, and the medi­a­tor have the tech­ni­cal exper­tise to under­stand the kind of evi­dence BIM pro­vides – and the abil­i­ty to give that evi­dence the weight it does or does not deserve, depend­ing on the dispute.