Automated Payment and Contract Management in the Construction Industry by Integrating Building Information Modeling and Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts
Source abstract
Abstract
Construction projects usually involve signing various contracts with specific billing procedures. In practice, dealing with complex contract structures causes significant problems, especially with regard to timely payment and guaranteed cash flow. Furthermore, a lack of transparency leads to a loss of trust. As a result, late or non-payment is a common problem in the construction industry. This paper presents the concept of implementing smart contracts for automated, transparent, and traceable payment processing for construction projects. Automated billing is achieved by combining Building Information Modeling (BIM) approaches with blockchain-based smart contracts. Thereby, parts of traditional construction contracts are transferred to a smart contract. The smart contract is set up using digital BIM-based tender documents and contains all of the relevant data for financial transactions. Once the contracted construction work has been accepted by the client, payments can be made automatically via authorized financial institutions. This paper describes the framework, referred to as BIMcontracts, the container-based data exchange, and the digital contract management workflow. It discusses the industry-specific requirements for blockchain and data storage and explains which technical and software architectural decisions were made. A case study is used to demonstrate the current implementation of the concept.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Blockchain Technology Applications and Security · BIM and Construction Integration · Organizational and Employee Performance
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Chair of Computing in Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany
Chair for Software Engineering, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, University of Duisburg-Essen, 45127 Essen, Germany
Adesso SE, Willy-Brandt-Straße 1, 20457 Hamburg, Germany
Kapellmann und Partner Rechtsanwälte mbB, 40219 Düsseldorf, Germany
Funding
Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie
References (59)
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