Technology in Architectural Practice

David,

I would argue that > Author = AEC Firm.

Work conducted under direction of the firm is the product of the firm and owned by the firm, not the employee unless so stipulated by contract. Any work I do for the firm is in exchange for compensation and as such is the property of the firm. By firm I also infer all forms of ownership including sole proprietor from here forward.

Having said that, I question what value and what rights are associated to a BIM, it is not as clear as I think it should be. For example; if I buy a car from GM, I own the car or product. GM can sell copies of the car but cannot sell my car to anyone else and I cannot make copies of the car using GM's design. I can make my own version of the car, provided I don't infringe on their copyrights and patents.  Software is not as clear because it isn't a physical thing. If I buy a copy of Revit from Autodesk, I don't own the software, only the rights to use it, but I or my firm, owns the output from the software. I may not make copies, or transfer ownership of the product, technically I may not even be allowed to let someone else "drive" it, because I only own the rights to use it.

Then comes BIM. Using the firm's resources and base of knowledge we create an intangible product to which each of our consultants adds value as it goes down stream. Like a virtual car, the design is owned by the firm and the project owner will get a copy of the product that they own, can use, can transfer ownership of and can profit from, but cannot make copies of using the firm's design. The BIM is the work product that the contractor will use to construct the tangible part of the project. Since BIM is a replacement and/or supplement to the construction documents, it is essentially treated the same in terms of rights. It is usually stipulated that the project owner receives a complete set of drawings at the close of the project. He owns those drawings, just as he owns the building itself. But does he own the information contained on those sheets of paper? In both conventional project delivery and BIM, the contractor adds value in the form of information. As-built drawings are usually considered the property of the project owner as they contain information produced by the contractor to whom he has paid a fee for the collection of such information, so would that not hold true of the BIM? Like a set of drawings, a BIM is used for O&M by the owner. Traditionally we have not provided owners with copies of cad files, out of concern that our design will be plagiarized. Without getting into the discussion about legal recourse and it nuances, let's just say we want to make it difficult for someone to do so. Unless an owner stipulates in the agreement that one of the deliverables will be cad files, we do not do this. When we do, it is usually a stripped down file. No construction notes, dimensions, title blocks. Basically they are getting backgrounds that they can use for O&M. Unfortunately they also have files that can easily be given to a competing firm for future work. This holds with BIM as well.

Should we be having the owner, contractor and other involved parties sign contracts that specify that their use of the BIM is not transferable? BIM does not lend itself well to stripping down, nor would such an act be easily accomplished. It defeats the purpose of BIM to do so. So we need to allow use of the BIM and retain our rights to the parts that we developed. For example the creation of families in Revit is a costly thing that we will use on other projects. Would selling the rights to a BIM preclude us from using the families in other projects?

In a roundabout way I come to the point that there needs to be distinct separation between the design and the Model of the design. Likewise there needs to be contractual distinction between the BIM, the design, and use of the BIM. The firm should retain ownership of the BIM and license its use to the Consultants, the Contractor(s), and the Owner. If an owner wishes to use the design and the BIM to construct multiple copies of the design (chain stores, banks, etc.), then the Firm should grant license to use the design and BIM just as software companies sell seats with appropriate compensation. Once you sell the rights you are precluding all future profits.