3.3.1. Functions of Current Rules

Rules and regulations aim to entertain healthy competition by ensuring the fair treatment of tenderers and by giving qualified tenderers and opportunity to compete. Regulations enable the use of a flexible prequalification mechanism, while some contracts allow the inclusion of key stakeholders during various project stages. Although silent in regard to SME or manufacturer inclusion, legislation, regulations and contracts are complemented by different governmental initiatives.

## 3.3.2. BIM-Specific Requirements

Since BIM intends to support a more integrated team approach, procurement models need to emphasize the early contributions of contractors and specialist contractors to the BIM model to develop functional specifications and thus facilitate information management, communication and collaboration (Vidalakis et al. 2020).

SMEs barriers to BIM implementation notably include legal ambiguity in terms of roles, responsibilities and distribution of benefits (Sun et al. 2017). The prefabrication industry, for which BIM can serve as a helpful tool to facilitate on-site assembly services, can benefit from the BIM collaborative environment and visualization of the physical and functional representations of prefabricated components (Khosrowshahi and Arayici 2012). However, few prefabrication projects have benefited from BIM, and vice versa, notably because of a lack of common BIM standards and of understanding firms' readiness to adopt BIM (Khosrowshahi and Arayici 2012).

Many different frameworks and tools exist to assess firms' BIM performance, such as Succar's BIM capability framework and BIM Quickscan (Mahamadu et al. 2017). Prequalification helps minimize the risk of selecting unsuitable firms for BIM projects by shortlisting potential suppliers and partnering (Porwal and Hewage 2013). Most of the BIM performance assessment models used for prequalification and qualification of suppliers focus on the physical resources and processes required instead of softer measures such as behavioural and organisational factors (Mahamadu et al. 2017).

## 3.3.3. Dysfunctions of Current Rules

Among dysfunctions figure the difficulty to include specialist contractors and manufacturers during the early design stage. Although DB or other early contractor involvement delivery methods allow for the inclusion of different stakeholders, this can only occur once the contract is awarded which means a significant portion of the design has already

been advanced by the master team. The absence of subcontractors and manufacturers in the selection process can also lead to inequities regarding risk–reward sharing and hinder information management and the harmonization of BIM processes. As of right now, no prequalification for SMEs, specialist contractors or manufacturers has been published in Quebec's electronic tendering system. Quebec has also not provided for guidelines, manuals or any form of standardization of BIM capability for prequalification.
