Who Pays for BIM? | BIMTA Brief 003

The question the industry needs to answer

BIM does not come without a cost. Someone pays for the modelling, coordination meetings, software, workstations, training, data management, revisions and handover deliverables.

The owner may fund the project. The general contractor may establish the coordination process. But trade contractors are frequently expected to supply the detailed installation information that makes construction coordination possible.

So who actually pays for that work—and who receives the value?

The answer depends on the contract, the scope, the procurement method and whether the BIM requirements were priced before the trade committed to the job. There is no defensible single percentage that applies to every project.

Coordination is valuable. Unfunded coordination is a problem.

A coordinated model can reduce clashes, avoid rework and help a trade install its work. These benefits matter. But a trade may also be asked to maintain models primarily for a general contractor's coordination process, generate information for an owner's future asset systems or redo work after design changes—without a clearly defined payment mechanism.

And if a trade's model cannot support fabrication, prefabrication, layout, procurement or installation, the trade may see much less direct return on its investment.

Being required to deliver data is not the same as being paid to deliver it.

What Canadian industry guidance already tells us

The 2025 Guide to BC Trade Definitions, developed by the BC Construction Association and its committee, is especially relevant. Its BIM section addresses costs that trades should include when BIM work is expressly specified. Where the contract asks trades to assist with BIM but does not detail that assistance, the guide distinguishes providing trade information and participating in meetings from providing computer operators, software and computer-generated drawings. It is guidance for defining tender scope—not an automatic contractual exemption or a law.

That distinction matters: BIM obligations should be described clearly enough to be priced.

There is also evidence of genuine trade-level value. Dodge Data & Analytics' 2020 study of mechanical and HVAC contractors documented benefits associated with BIM-connected fabrication, including improved productivity, reduced material waste and better installed-work quality. A 2026 Dodge brief on digital fabrication emphasizes the role of integrated processes rather than software adoption alone. Those findings support investing in BIM where a trade can use the output—not assuming every requested deliverable creates the same return for everyone.

A fairer commercial approach

Before asking a trade to accept a BIM requirement, a project team should be able to answer five questions:

Purpose: Who needs this model or dataset, and what decision or activity will it support?
Responsibility: Who creates, checks, updates and accepts each deliverable?
Compensation: Where are the modelling hours, software, coordination time and information deliverables included in the trade's price?
Change: What happens to time and cost when a design change forces remodelling and recoordination?
Value: Does the deliverable benefit the trade's fabrication or installation process, the wider project, the owner—or all three?

This is not a demand to charge twice for work already included in a contract. It is a demand to make the scope visible and measurable before contracts are signed, and to manage changes when that scope grows.

What BIMTA proposes to measure

BIMTA wants trade contractors to bring real, anonymized project examples. For each BIM task, we can record:

Inputs: staff hours, loaded labour cost, software, hardware, outsourcing and training;
Changes: additional model revisions, coordination resets and rework after design updates;
Outputs: models, fabrication-ready information, site layout, clash resolutions and handover records;
Outcomes: time saved or lost, rework avoided, fabrication use and whether the work was actually compensated.

With participating companies, BIMTA can compare approaches, test better workflows and develop practical standard operating procedures based on measured results.

The bottom line

The trades should have a voice in defining the BIM work they are expected to fund and deliver.

BIM is not the problem. Unclear scope, disconnected workflows and costs that are invisible at tender time are the problem.

If you work for a Canadian trade contractor and have experienced this firsthand, please reach out to BIMTA. We want to hear what the requirement was, what it cost, who benefited and what could have been done differently.

We cannot improve what we do not measure—and we cannot fairly price what has not been defined.

References and further reading

Issue 003 · Version 1.0 · 2 November 2026. Published from the approved BIMTA brief. BIMTA’s proposed measurement work is not completed research.

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