POSTHUMAN BIM. When Information Can Act: Agency Governance and the BIM Master

Building Information Modelling (BIM) increasingly operates within information environments in which computational agents can retrieve structured data, interpret context, use tools, modify working states and iterate toward delegated objectives. This conceptual paper examines how building information management changes when operational participation in the information-action loop is no longer exclusively human. Drawing on BIM and information-management literature, agentic Information Systems, critical posthumanism and sociomateriality, human-factors and high-reliability research, and selected professional and legal sources, the paper proposes Posthuman BIM as an analytical framework for distributed operational and epistemic participation. It introduces a BIM-specific definition of operational agency and derives seven governance domains: operational agency and delegation; semantics and interpretation; epistemic authority and provenance; decision-shaping; decision authority; accountability and the liability boundary; and material and ecological consequence. From these domains, the paper infers a cross-dimensional governance function and proposes the BIM Master as a distinct transitional professional configuration of that function. The role combines facilitation and coordination of human interactions with governance of distributed agency, knowledge routing and decision architecture, while specialist approval authority remains distributed. The framework further proposes risk-proportionate autonomy, separation of shaping and approval, least privilege, deference to expertise, challengeability, diverse independent verification and decision provenance as governance constraints. Posthuman BIM therefore reframes information management as the governance of heterogeneous agency, meaning, authority and consequence in hybrid built-environment information ecosystems.