Smart Contract-Enabled Construction Claim Management in BIM and CDE-Enhanced Data Environment

With the advanced information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the construction claim management, such as ontology, data mining, and building information modeling (BIM), many aspects have been improved, including construction claim early identification, analysis and visualization. However, due to the complex and lengthy nature of construction claim procedure, how to execute and visualize it digitally with data traceability is not yet been studied. Integrating these technologies with blockchain and smart contracts, data integrity and process tracing can be ensured for construction claim management. This study proposes a framework to integrate BIM, blockchain, smart contracts and common data environment (CDE) focusing on construction claim procedure generation, execution and visualization. The framework is developed to help improve the traceability, transparency and automation of the construction claim procedure. A case study is illustrated to demonstrate and evaluate the current implementation of the proposed framework. Several aspects for improvement and future directions are discussed in the end.