Barnaby Rush, who is Masters students, has conducted research to examine the legal and contractual barriers to BIM implementation and how the NEC4 standard form of construction contract has developed to try and incorporate BIM into the contractual arrangement of parties, in order to overcome these barriers and increase wider BIM uptake. His research specifically focused from the viewpoint of contractors working in the British civil engineering industry, as he works for a main contractor in the British civil engineering industry and has first-hand experience of the lack of BIM uptake in this industry compared to the building or architecture industries. There has also been little previous research from the viewpoints of civil engineering contractors on BIM.

Findings from his questionnaire survey and interviews so far suggest that the NEC4 has made several positive changes to incorporate BIM into the contractual arrangements of parties which should assist in increasing BIM uptake in the British civil engineering industry. However, there are still barriers that exist, with the most fascinating theme to emerge is that from a contractor perspective, a lack of client understanding and demand for BIM are the biggest barriers to increased BIM implementation, both in this particular industry and as a whole.

Barnaby's research so far has gone on to discuss the potential reasons for this and suggest that for public sector civil engineering projects, the lack of BIM understanding and demand from local authorities and government are actually contributing to the reasons why only a 7% reduction in public sector project costs were achieved by 2016, compared to the government mandated target of 20%.

Barnaby is hoping to discuss this area of his findings further through meeting Lord Clement-Jones, with the hope that he can provide some additional insight on this from a government perspective and offer some recommendations for action and future research.