Administrative Judicial Approach to Legal Building Information Modelling in Italy

This paper considers the administrative judicial approach to Building Information Modelling (BIM) in Italy. BIM was chosen as an innovative construction method. In addition, the Italian legal system has been chosen as a model because while the EU law only encourages countries to implement building information electronic modelling tools, the Italian legislator has established their mandatory application. Although Italy is not part of the common law system, recent reforms have underlined the importance of the role of jurisprudence. Thus, the paper includes a case law study. This contribution is innovative not only because it applies a judicial approach to legal BIM, while other scientific papers focus on its physical or legal implementation, but more importantly, it proposes some of the reasons why judges make the mistake of not classifying BIM as a method. Moreover, this contribution informs readers of the public procurements dealing with BIM in Italy. So, in other words, it shows that in Italy, administrative judges have dealt with several public procurements including BIM. The review of the Italian administrative judicial approach to legal BIM has shown two main results. First, although BIM is a new method, the main principles of administrative law still apply. Second, although BIM is a method, several legal decisions have confused it with other concepts, such as modality, software, system, project, methodology, model, or technology. The absence of correct classification by Italian administrative judges might be due to the mistake in the invitation for bids, or due to the fact that the Italian Parliament also needed clarification on the question of method versus methodology.