This message has been cross posted to the following Discussion Forums: Repositioning the Architect and Practice Management Member Conversations .
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Like most of you I get those email updates on postings made in the Knowledge Communities that I have subscribed to. Late yesterday I got my usual update and find 20 some postings regarding "Who Owns CAD files?" As I read the postings I began to wonder why we are still having this conversation 20 years after CAD went mainstream, and what will happen as BIM becomes more common.
There is also a flip side to the discussion that I didn't see touched upon. That one is related to what do you do if you're hired to renovate or add onto a building and are given CAD files by the owner? You know you didn't create them. You know that you don't have time to re-trace all lines and layers - and no one would know if you did or not.
I reside in Nevada. State law says I own the documents, which means I own the CAD files. Client says he's "paid" for them, wants a copy. I say I'll give him a copy, but point out he's also taken cab rides, paid for it - and has nothing much to show for it. State law says I can't use another architects work - I have to re-draw it by myself. That's a law written for the age of T-Squares and triangles. I know very well that the cad files that I prepared and went to the ownership of any large casino ended up in another architects possession when they did an addition. Can't prove it though, and don't really feel the need to. The law needs to be updated.
Many architects still think that they're working under the premise that what they are producing is "design intent" documents. Really? After producing a set of 400 sheets and three volumes of specifications can I honestly say that the work I and my consultants did was only design intent? It's a weak enough argument if the work was done in CAD, but if you're working in BIM the argument even weaker and basically cuts off our own legs.
Consider: say you're working on a project in BIM, and say that you maintain you're only doing design intent. That means that contractor has to re-do the virtual model to fully take advantages of the strengths of BIM, such as faster cost estimating, schedule analysis, and clash detection. What purpose then, is the architects BIM model? Can't build from it, can't extract information from it - all you can do is take the design intent from it and discard it. Consider the architect discarded at that point too.
But if you make a BIM model that can be used by the contractor and his subs, then you can work with them to resolve conflicts, keep costs in line, and meet the schedule. You've become an integral and valuable part of the whole design and construction team.
If we look at current state laws, we'll see that most are relevant to the time when drawings were created by hand. CAD is a 2D system, an electronic enhancement of hand drafting, which put some pressure on the current laws - but BIM will blow them out of the box.
Most States will now allow electronic seals to be applied to CAD files - and that may be the biggest adjustment any of them have done to accomdate the new tools available to us. What needs to change if the best way to deliver design and construction services is in an Integrated Project Delivery format? States define who can be an owner of an architectural firm - what if the best legal format for IPD is a one time Integrated Venture Firm in which the contractor, architect and engineers have ownership (and liability) positions? How does liability get assigned if the architect gives an overall design of a precast panel, the structural engineer advises on overall thickness and reinforcing, and a sub-trade details out all the re-bar - all in the same virtual building model?
How do you even provide an architects or engineers stamp when the model is a collaboration between the two - and sometimes with the fabricator? Or do you just provide a string of stamps alongside the model at some point? Perhaps the concept of "stamping drawings" is something that should be re-considered when we're dealing with virtual building models.
After 20 some years of CAD all we have to show for it is electronic sealing of drawings. In another 20 years the BIM changes will have revolutionized the business and we'll either be dead as a profession and held in thrall to the contractors, or we'll have worked out and fought to hold our own corner of the construction business. I don't know what the AIA has been doing along this line, but I believe there is nothing more important for their lawyers to focus on - and quit spending time monitoring these discussions for horribly wicked things like making "product recommendations".
We're Architects. We plan. Let's plan for our own future.
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Klaus Steinke AIA
Principal
Klaus Steinke Architect
Las Vegas NV
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