Summary: |
At present there is a anachronism using modern IT-Equipment for building projects: Files and data are transmitted between persons, far away from each other, within seconds. But legally binding orders or requests, what to do with this data, are transmitted in a written form on a sheet of paper by registered mail, the delivery takes days and weeks.Or CAD-files are distributed to the building participants for being able to work with them. But legally binding are only the drawings on paper.In a IT-environment the consideration of legal aspects is far behind the level of the achieved technical progress. Up to now only technical aspects have been considered when doing IT-based work.Worldwide ToCEE, funded partially by the European Commission, is the first research project dealing with IT in the construction industry which also addresses the legal aspects, especially when developing the CAD - environment further to a Concurrent Engineering Environment (CEE) using electronic transmission of documents and files.Many legal aspects arise because of using files and electronically stored data instead of paper. This leads for instance to the following problems: * How can legal actions be documented and transferred using electronic media instead of paper? ,Electronic signature" and ,Encryption" is one of the key points in this field. * How is it possible to extract and present evidence from the mass of electronically stored data? * How can defects and relative responsibilities of the parties involved later be reconstructed? * Which of the national laws and which directives of the European Union have to be taken into consideration?* How can AEC-objects be expanded with legal elements in order to be able to avoid the use of paper in a building project?ToCEE tries to give solutions for these problems. The legal part of ToCEE is managed and supervised |