Longitudinal Study of Information Management in University Construction Contracts: Fid-Bau Portal

Longitudinal Study of Information Management in University Construction Contracts

Celoza, Amelia / de Oliveira, Daniel P. / Leite, Fernanda

Information management (IM) is a critical component to projects in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. A defined IM process can improve a project’s lifecycle, from project delivery to operations and maintenance. Typically, owners are the project stakeholders that can benefit the most from having a defined IM process as having current, relevant, and accurate information can improve decision-making and overall project performance. To this end, a longitudinal study of university construction contract documents with respect to IM was carried out. The focus was on universities as they are owners and operators who have a vested interest in their project’s lifecycle. Researchers evaluated contract documents comprised of the construction manager at risk (CMAR) agreement and the general conditions document for one university system and these documents span 2002–2019. Three versions of the CMAR agreement and three versions of the general conditions documents were analyzed and compared using qualitative analysis and coding. The main areas of analysis were information transactions, IM systems, and legal factors impacting IM. Results of this analysis show that as new IM processes, such as building information modeling, were adopted in the organization, more specific language regarding the process of IM were included in the contract documents. These findings illustrate how IM has evolved over time in university contracts between owners and contractors.