- Watch out
- What it costs
- Experienced readers
- Remember
- In BIMpedia
Procurement is how the client buys the project: who it appoints, in what order, under what contracts. The route decides who designs, who builds, who carries which risks, and when information changes hands. For a coordinator, it explains why responsibilities shift halfway through a project.
| Route | Who designs | Contractor joins | Information impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional | Client's design team, fully | After design | Designers own models to tender; contractor adds its own |
| Design and build | Client's team starts, contractor finishes (often novated) | Early or mid-design | Models change owner at novation |
| Management contracting | Design team, packages let in stages | Early | Many package interfaces to coordinate |
| Collaborative forms (alliancing, IPD) | Shared | From the start | Shared models and incentives |
Contracts and information
- The contract documents (drawings, specifications, information requirements) define what's being bought.
- The information protocol brings the BIM requirements into each appointment.
- Subcontracts must carry the same requirements down the chain.
- Changes to information requirements after signing are changes: they can cost time and money.
At novation, the architect's models move to the contractor's CDE with no agreement on what state they're in. Months later, the contractor claims the stage 4 models were incomplete; the architect says they met their old appointment. Nobody recorded what was handed over.
Before novation, the coordinator runs a handover review: every model and drawing, its status, a check against the stage requirements, and a list of known gaps, signed off by client, architect and contractor. The new appointment refers to it.
A hospital is procured design and build: the client's architect and engineers reach stage 3, then are novated to the contractor, who also appoints MEP and façade subcontractors. List three points where information changes hands, and what you'd check at each.
Key takeaways
- Procurement routes (traditional, design and build, management contracting, collaborative forms) decide who designs, who builds and who carries risk.
- In design and build, design responsibility often passes from the client's designers to the contractor (novation), and so do the models.
- Contract documents, specifications and the information protocol decide what information each party must deliver.
- Changes cost money because contracts price a defined scope; information changes count too.