Surety Association of Canada to help address BIM issues

The Surety Association of Canada (SAC) is prepared to work with the Canada BIM Council and other industry stakeholders to address challenges posed by adoption of Building Information Modeling, says president Steven Ness.

Technolgoy

While the SAC supports and embraces technology for the betterment of the industry, there is little or no comprehensive data available on risk analysis, apportionment or management.

Ness expressed concern that despite all of the enthusiasm over BIM and efforts directed towards implementation of this technology, no one has taken the time to identify some of the associated risks and develop a risk management model to deal with them.

He cautioned council members not to rush BIM projects out the door without addressing inherent risk management issues.

“The devil is in the details,” Ness told a recent Insight Information forum in Toronto.

Ness, whose organization’s members include major bonding companies across Canada, said BIM represents a fundamental and exciting change to the way in which projects are conceived, designed and built.

Potential advantages include greater certainty when it comes to project costs, schedules, enhanced efficiencies in the design, construction and operating phases, and cost savings resulting from minimizing change orders, cost overruns and the like.

“This is music to a bonding company’s ears,” he said.

Yet, there are some key challenges that must be addressed, said Ness, who began his career in the surety industry in 1977, helped found the SAC in 1992 and has served as its president since 1994.

He said there is no case law pertaining to BIM.

What would happen should disputes or contractor defaults arise? There isn’t any standard language on which to base any such case law.

Given that BIM involves use of sophisticated software by all parties to the construction process, integration and inter-operability of the various systems could become an issue, he said.

As surety bonds are a risk transfer instrument that protects construction purchasers from the risks of contractor default, Ness said it must be crystal clear what constitutes a default in order that a surety can evaluate the risk.

By the same token, he said, there is the question of what rectification of such a default could entail.

“For example, would sureties be called upon to make a building perform to a set technical standard?” he asked.