Civil liability for defective design in construction contracts: a comparative study of bahrain and european legal frameworks with emphasis on artificial intelligence in risk assessment

As the nature of the construction projects is becoming more and more complex, the terms and conditions of the laws and the legal implications in the Kingdom of Bahrain are becoming challenged to come up with a clear and definite definition and assign liability to the design defects that cause the collapse of the structures, loss of funds, claims and project delays. These nations were selected due to their foundational influence on Bahrain’s civil code. This offers established and mature jurisprudence for comparative analysis of liability regimes. The study examines the idea of contract and tort liability in construction law and outlines major gaps in existing liability systems and challenges of proving causality in multi-party projects. The applied research methodology includes qualitative doctrinal legal research, which will be enhanced by the comparative legal analysis and concept review of AI-oriented risk assessment technologies to assess their potential integration into the current liability regimes. One of the main results of this study is the role of AI technologies, such as predictive modelling, big data analytics, and machine learning, in the early identification and control of risks, in terms of design. This article presents a legalist perspective on technology by integrating technology expertise with legal argumentation that a reformed legal framework is required, where AI-based products can help proactively prevent risks in place, enhance the responsibility of design, and work on preventing litigation. The findings also show that Bahrain has legal traditions and forms of regulation, most of which are based on the concepts of civil law, which are borrowed from the Egyptian and the French systems, whereas France and Germany, among other European countries, provide long-established, highly developed regimes of liability.