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CHAPTER 1 Beyond Basic documentation
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 understanding how that
application affects your workflow—and managing that change. That 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.
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 time frame 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 techni-
cally 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 for the hopes of innovation? Any system,
no matter how inefficient, if it is predictable, there is 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
Figure 1.13
Happiness vs. time
in technological
adoption
Time
Innovation
Predictability
Happiness
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