**5. Conclusions**

This paper notably highlights the need to rely more heavily on legislation, regulations, contracts and infra-regulatory rules to clarify public bodies' expectations, to standardize collaborative mechanisms, to reduce uncertainty and to clarify the status of the model between the procurement and the realization phase. Contractual mechanisms such as requests for information, requests for optimization measures and commercially confidential meetings provide some form of collaboration, but none of these mechanisms allow the assessment of tenderer's BIM competence before the adjudication of the contract. Tenderers are thus not evaluated, or very lightly so, regarding their capacity to carry out BIM projects and when they are, it is formally rather than substantially, such as through interactive scenarios or problem solving. This is partly caused by the imperatives of fairness whereby public bodies must publicly share responses to requests for information and requests for optimization measures. One possible solution to this problem would consist of integrating solicitation methods, such as rank-and-run or best and final offer (BAFO), which would enable public bodies to enter bilateral negotiations with the highest scoring integrated team of the first stage of the request for proposals, thus ensuring the refinement of more confidential aspects of the proposals, whether technical or commercial, during the second phase of the request for proposals.

Since BIM is 10% technology and 90% sociology, it is essential to adjust award criteria for integrated projects. The tension between the desire to ensure equal treatment of tenderers objectively and formally through price-based competition and the need to assess the inherent qualities of the parties in order to achieve optimal collaboration must thus be resolved. The essence of BIM lies in human interactions, clear communication, openmindedness and cooperative behaviour. The use of negotiated two-stage procurement processes can help resolve this tension. The request for qualifications and the first stage of the request for proposals process would allow public bodies to assess objective qualities, such as experience and similar projects carried out, and subjective qualities through interviews and real-time problem-solving scenarios. The second stage of the request for proposals would ensure the co-development of technical and financial matters through multiple workshops enabling the development of trust and the harmonization of processes between public and private parties.

Furthermore, the use of a negotiated two-stage procurement process—during which a risk–reward sharing mechanism is developed through target costing combined with an estimated price—as well as incorporating an integrated project insurance model, claim waivers and liability limitations should allow better team integration and collaboration. Additionally, since BIM and IPD encourage upstream participation from a wide range of stakeholders, suppliers and manufacturers could be prequalified by completing a standard-

ized questionnaire to assess their BIM capability and maturity, while also assessing softer traits such as behavioural attributes and the propensity to collaborate. Their presence and participation in the request for proposals process would facilitate target costing and the inclusion of innovative delivery solutions for the project.

The importance of preliminary design in IPD and BIM shifts design efforts to the early stages of the project. However, regulatory remunerations have not been updated or indexed for 9 years to reflect the evolution of professionals' practice resulting from new technologies and the early-stage intensity of design. The benefits do not only take pecuniary forms but are also reflected in intellectual property. Contractual documents should therefore reflect the interwoven, multidisciplinary and collaborative design processes that blur the lines of parties' roles and responsibilities and thus provide for joint authorship.

The authors suggest that the use of IPD should help mitigate legal barriers hindering BIM implementation, while preserving balance between fairness and encouraging collaboration. This would ensure public bodies reap the full benefits of the BIM process such as better design, controlled life-cycle costs, production quality, automated assembly, cost savings and reduction in project time. To do so, revisions must be made to legislative, regulatory and contractual norms to facilitate an optimal implementation of BIM for future public infrastructure projects to enable the achievement of the public interest by obtaining.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, G.J.; methodology, G.J.; validation, G.J., P.L. and R.B.; formal analysis, G.J.; writing—original draft preparation, G.J.; writing—review and editing, G.J., P.L. and R.B.; supervision, P.L. and R.B. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The authors are grateful to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for the financial support through its IRC (IRCPJ 461745-12) and CRD (RDCPJ 445200-12 and RDCPJ 445200-12) programs, as well as the industrial partners of the NSERC industrial chair on eco-responsible wood construction (CIRCERB).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Conflicts of Interest:** G.J. is currently employed by the SQI, which had no say in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
