Liability Factors and Conceptual Framework for Contracts to Manage Design for Digital Fabrication in Construction Projects

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.