Legal Aspects Connected to the Use of BIM in the Danish Building Sector

In 2013, the Danish government implemented a declaration for the use of information and communication technology in governmental buildings (ICTdeclaration). This has led to an increasing number of building projects using building information modeling (BIM) with potentially better productivity and quality. In spite of documented advantages from using BIM, this case study shows that the possibility of delivering added value using BIM is a challenge because of several legal aspects. The existing laws are individualistic, and the BIM line of thinking is collectivistic. Therefore, BIM gives some matter of dispute in correlation to existing contractual terms i.e. displacement of traditional areas of responsibility, risks, legitimate trust to the building models and obscurity about ownership to digital information. This case study identifies several potential barriers for using BIM in the Danish Building Sector in the existing legislation as well as in the existing contractual terms. There is legal uncertainty connected to the use of BIM. There is no legal practice in the BIM area that refrains the contractors from achieving a maximum of advantage using BIM. BIM gives rise to interpreting the legislation in Denmark in a new and unknown context regarding responsibility, liability, and privileges between the parties in a building project.