Liability Factors and Conceptual Framework for Contracts to Manage Design for Digital Fabrication in Construction Projects
Ming Shan Ng (ETH Zürich)
Daniel Hall (TU Delft - Design & Construction Management)
Shang Hsien Hsieh (National Taiwan University)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
The adoption of digital fabrication - fabrication based on digital design - in the early design phase in projects requires a thorough understanding of the liability factors to design the contract. This paper addresses this issue using a two-stage research approach. First, a case study research maps the process from digital design to digital fabrication in an existing project that adopted digital fabrication using the design-bid-build model. Second, a three-round Delphi survey of 14 stakeholders of that project identifies and ranks 163 liability factors under eight categories: actors, resources, conditions, attributes, processes, artifacts, values, and risks. The resources of management capability and building information modeling (BIM) expertise rank as the two most important liability factors. Building on these findings, the paper presents a conceptual framework for contract design and discusses how the existing project delivery models - design-bid-build, construction management, design-build, and integrated project delivery (IPD) - can consider the liability factors in contracts.