How BIM Affects Firm Culture

In understanding where you are and where you want to be in this adoption curve, it's also important to understand that moving between any of the iterations of this curve requires a shift in your internal firm culture. As anyone who's adopted BIM can tell you, the difficulties you might experience do not come from learning a new application but from understanding how that application affects your workflow—and managing that change. The ability to adapt and accept that change within an organization will in some way determine where you fall on the adoption curve.

Predictability vs. Innovation

To understand the process of any change, think about it as a product of happiness over time, as shown in Figure 1.13. The process of any change, be it adoption of a new workflow or tool within your office to a more personal one, such as acquiring a new cell phone, can be described by this curve.

FIGURE 1.13 Happiness vs. time in technological adoption

Let's use the simple example of a new cell phone. When you first get the new cell, there is an increase in your happiness. The new device might have a color screen, allow you to send or receive emails, play games, or find the nearest Starbucks. As you gain familiarity with these features, your happiness goes up. At some point in your adoption or process, there is an initial pinnacle to your happiness. You briefly plateau. This occurs when you are now asked to do something within a limited timeframe or utilize a new feature that is outside your comfort zone—and things don't proceed as planned.

In our cell phone example, this could occur the first time you try to synchronize your phone with the office email server, and instead of performing correctly, it duplicates or shuffles your contacts. Now the names are no longer associated with the proper phone numbers or email addresses, and the system you've come to rely on is now unpredictable. In a BIM-based example, this could mean you have a schematic design deadline, or you need to create a wall section or model a set of ornate stairs in a limited amount of time. You might know that the task is technically possible, but you have yet to ever perform that task personally.

There comes a point as your stress level goes up that your happiness begins to decline, and you hit a point (shown as a dot on the graph in Figure 1.13). At this point, you perceive a crossroads: Do you go back to the previous technology (the old phone) and choose a path of predictability, or do you muscle forward and push for mastering the change in the hope of achieving innovation? No matter how inefficient any system may be, if it is predictable, there will be a certain amount of comfort associated with the existing system. As you try to find your way along the adoption curve, understand that part of what you are trying to manage—either personally or for your project team—is this nexus of predictability versus innovation while trying to maintain a level of happiness and positive morale.

Evolution vs. Revolution

While you're in the process of trying to manage the amount of change you're willing to endure, you also need to consider the speed at which that change will affect your project teams. Progress and innovation are iterative and can take several cycles to perfect a technique or workflow. The process of change and creating new methodologies using BIM is an evolution, not a revolution.

Figure 1.14 shows two bicycles. The image on the left is the penny-farthing bicycle taken from Appleton's Cyclopaedia of Applied Mechanics of 1892. Although not the first bicycle (which was invented in 1817 in Paris), it does demonstrate many of the rudimentary and defining features of what we think of a bicycle today: two wheels, a handlebar, and pedals to supply power. The image on the right is the 2006 thesis design of Australian University student Gavin Smith. The bike was designed to assist people with disabilities or those with impaired motor skills in riding a bike unaided. The basic concept is that the bike would supply its own balance at low speeds, and the wheels would remain canted. As the bike moves faster and wheel speed increases, the wheels become vertical and the rider is able to ride at faster speeds while balancing mostly on his or her own. As the bike slows, the wheels cant back in again, giving the rider the necessary balance needed at lower speeds. The bike on the right still possesses all of the distinguishing characteristics of what we define as a bicycle and is thusly an evolution of the bike over many, many iterations. A similar evolution will occur with your use of BIM—the more often you iterate the change, the more comfortable and efficient it will become.

FIGURE 1.14 Understanding replication vs. innovation