Technology adoption

 Technology adoption

I'm fed up with people asking the rhetorical question why this or that technology have a low rate of adoption in this or that area. What they imply is that we are fools not to acknowledge the potential of what they are propagating. Well, they may believe in the promise of blockchains, 3D printing or even BIM bit real evidence of performance improvement is often scarce. We are called to trust the prophets of innovation and adopt not just the technologies but also some prescriptive or proscriptive framework for their deployment and application. And if things don't work as expected, it's often the users' fault for not believing enough to apply the technologies as faithfully as required. 

This is irritating enough to throw the technologies back to their face but I actually think that the mediocre performance one achieves with many new technologies is actually what we should expect. The reason for that is that the technologies are deployed within contexts that define what can be achieved more that the technologies themselves. One can 3D-print a minimal shelter like a tent but cannot do the same with a conventional building of bricks, tiles, concrete, wood, steel, glass etc. 3D printing seems inevitably restricted to homogeneous subsystems of the whole. The way these subsystems come together to form the building has possible limitations and inefficiencies that remain largely unaffected. In fact, it may get even worse if 3D printing is overspecialized. 

Similarly, if BIM is used to produce the drawings, bills of materials etc. customary in conventional design and construction, then the performance of BIM is ultimately bounded by the limitations of such documents and the practices around them. Again, moreover, the new technology may reinforce the existing situation and make its limitations more pronounced. This, however, does not mean that the goals of the new technology have not been achieved: the documents may be produced faster, easier, more completely etc. The problem is that the goals are constrained in a timid or arbitrary way. 

Such constraints make it hard to understand the true potential of each technology because they define it relatively to others. Imagine, for example, that we are re-introducing the venerable dual technologies of pen and paper as an alternative to computing technologies (handwriting is actually one of the original digital technologies but not in the sense we use the term "digital" today - just think about it). We will have little difficulty exalting the relative promise of these technologies: low cost, wide availability, familiarity, no electricity requirements (hence good for the environment), effortless multimediality (at least concerning combining letters, numbers, drawings and various notations on the same page) - clear advantages over digital means. However, asking users to reproduce a laser-printed page with their handwriting would be unwise. It would introduce an arbitrary framework of adoption that could only lower performance. Asking users to write in a legible hand is not only more realistic but also meaningful and constructive. The real performance of pen and paper is unrelated to copying computer-produced text; it's all about the cognitive, psychological and other brain-related advantages of coordinated work with the eyes and the hands, especially concerning language, about which we have been hearing more and more in the last decade. Handwriting is making a comeback because we need it in ways that may be unrelated to computing technologies. 

Technology deployment and adoption should therefore connect to the real goals behind the technology and the real needs of the users, not the compromised first steps that are deemed safe in a fixed, conservative world. Such a world does not exist. 

Why one shouldn't believe in BIM maturity levels

Why one shouldn't believe in BIM maturity levels

One of the holy cows of BIM theory is the notion of maturity levels. Inspired by them, I suggest that there are also car driving maturity levels:

1.  Sitting in the driver's seat in a stationary car with the engine turned off, not touching anything 
2.  Sitting in the driver's seat in a stationary car and operating the windshield wipers
3.  Driving a car in a straight line only 
4.  Driving a car safely under any circumstances 
5.  Driving a car in a way beneficial to society and the economy 

Ludicrous? Well, no less than some of the BIM maturity levels that are currently been taken for granted. 

On a more serious note, I'm not sure what to make of these levels. The appeal of levels and categorization in general is understandable. The problem with categories is that they should be meaningful, that they should make the world easier to describe in a truthful and reliable manner - not develop arbitrary, possibly distorting filters for reality. 

Do BIM maturity levels represent stages in the development of BIM skills and knowledge, similarly to the capability maturity model, where maturity refers to the degree of formalization and optimization in the processes of an organization, from ad hoc or even chaotic to repeatable and efficient? 

I don't think that the adoption of BIM is a similar progression. One doesn't have to start from 2D CAD before moving on to nD BIM. The setup of the BIM maturity levels actually reveals the limitations of the mainstream approach to BIM deployment, including fixations on analogue practices like the production of 2D drawings and the gathering of information around these drawings, which are actually harmful to understanding BIM, as they sidetrack learners to outdated means and workflows. 

BIM maturity levels make too much of the difference between 2D and 3D representations, as if 2D building drawings do not convey 3D information or as if one could make 2D models in BIM. That some of the views of a model are 2D projections should not matter, in the same way that it does not matter that other views are tables. I won't go any further into dimensions in BIM; that chapter has been closed for me with a recent paper in Automation in Construction (Dimensionality in BIM: Why BIM cannot have more than four dimensions? doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103153).

What I miss is other indications of maturity and progress, such as the correct use of symbols, properties, parameters etc, the completeness and consistency of models and other syntactic, semantic and pragmatic measures. Surely these are the most significant for the successful use of BIM. The only positive aspect of BIM maturity levels is that they emphasize the significance of a shared, central model - and then spoil it by suggesting that one can do BIM without one. 

What architects don't draw (and certainly don't design)

What architects don't draw (and certainly don't design)

I'm collecting photographs of things that don't seem right in buildings. Most are of pipes and cables just attached on the building, marring its appearance, creating places difficult to clean or maintain or even hazards. 

Others are of details clearly not designed, resulting into strange, dysfunctional, unreachable or uncleanable parts. 

 

My problem with such failures is how they happen and why. It appears that even with 3D software, integration and interoperability in BIM etc., there is a lot that we fail to see. Even worse is that we often don't care - and I'm referring to everybody here, from architects and engineers to clients and contractors. We're used to improvised solutions at the last moment, even on site - we are even proud of this capacity, as if any old solution just so as not to halt design or construction is to the benefit of the building. 

I believe that the answer to the problem is quite easy technically but currently impossible socially: there are not enough people interested in changing the production processes in the built environment. If these don't improve, no change in designing can be expected. So, I'll just keep collecting the photographs in the hope that the sheer volume of stupidity they present is enough evidence for some future generation.  

Trouble with BIM

Trouble with BIM

The optimist would say that support for BIM is consolidating; the pessimist that it's dwindling. There is still a substantial push for BIM but at the same time there are more critical voices - and they're not all Luddites. In my own view, there is a growing number of organizations that is increasingly reluctant to invest in BIM. If there's a hard core of organizations pushing BIM, there's also a periphery that if not turning against BIM, is certainly refusing to adopt and adapt to it. In between there are organizations that reluctantly follow and partially implement BIM.

Critics (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1080/09613218.2017.1293940) stress that the problems are not only practical, such as the cost and complexity of the implementation, but also operational, due to the imposition of a design representation onto activities and processes. They are concerned with the possibility of a digital divide that may disenfranchise smaller firms and create a two-tier marker with benefits only for the most privileged and powerful, who can afford the luxury of being BIM compliant. This, they argue, may reduce the potential of change through BIM.
While I largely agree with the criticism, I fear it suffers from a couple of fallacies. Firstly, it expects technology to bring on change in society rather than technology to meet emerging or latent demand in society. BIM does not bring change; at best it enables change and helps channel it in specific ways. One shouldn't put the cart before the horse and expect the horse to understand how it should push.
Secondly, it equates the technology with its current implementation. The way BIM is deployed today is depressingly limited. The software is underwhelmingly powerful and laden with analogue remnants, while users tend to do as little as possible rather than focusing on returns from a serious investment. We even talk of levels in BIM deployment and maturity but some of these levels do not make sense because they go against the fundamental requirements of the technology (and methodology, I hasten to add to pacify the believers).
If we place this criticism on the above scheme, it becomes obvious that the periphery simply doesn't recognize the necessity of a change to which BIM could contribute, so they don't adopt it. They can also be critical of the way it is implemented and hence unwilling to join in. In any case, they don't care enough, in the same way that not everyone cares about social media and hence doesn't spend endless hours setting up multiple profiles and maintaining their status and history.
This suggests that BIM is being pushed in a direction that doesn't relate to the change required in AECO and the built environment. That such a change is urgently needed is unquestionable but one cannot talk of culture change for implementing BIM; it's the other way around: ongoing culture change should promote BIM.
As for the practical and operational side, if the change was evident and BIM fitted the bill, people would have invested heavily in it. Just compare to the huge investment we have made as societies, organizations and individuals in mobile information processing. What started as mobile telephony was soon recognized for what it could offer and adopted widely and fervently. The adaptation it brought on is simply spectacular. Look around you wherever you may happen to be: people grab every opportunity to do something with their smartphones. Would they do the same for BIM?

Standards, protocols, technologies and purpose

Standards, protocols, technologies and purpose

Once again I've been busy with literature review on BIM and related matters, once again I found myself swimming in an ocean of technicalities, most of which seem to be supporting each other's existence: protocols, guidelines, standards - all presented as obvious solutions to fundamental problems, as key enablers of change. Sometimes what they say hits the nail on the head, e.g. when they suggest that BIM adoption is not enough, that it's all down to more extensive and intensive collaboration through BIM. More often, however, it's all about how to use some arbitrary facilities: how to be a correct user of some technologies (orthopraxy), how to conform to some standards.
That's not enough: there has to be some real purpose, something that justifies the time and effort put into mastering and utilizing all these facilities. I know that this runs contrary to current sociotechnological tendencies, that the reward is often just the ability to participate, but I still need some sense of purpose: why am I modelling a wall like this; what will be the outcome; which benefits are we expecting from collaboration and conformity. Without adequate answers, I fear I'm just jumping on a bandwagon that leads me nowhere. Even with a good seat and good company, I have better things to do elsewhere.

BIM and smartphones

BIM and smartphones 

Another frequent question (and complaint) about BIM is about learning it: when can one find the right training programme? I often hear of expensive courses for employees of design, engineering and construction firms, as well as for students (universities don't often care for the development of some practical skills). Which one of these courses is the best?

My usual answer is that one should take a BIM course with the same people who gave them their smartphone training because they appear to have made an excellent job of it: practically everyone uses a smartphone nowadays, most to the best of their ability and, perhaps equally significantly, most seem happy with what they can do with it. People think I'm joking but I'm not.

What makes self-education and training so effective with some technologies? Does it apply to all things? Leaving aside a ubiquitous companion like the smartphone, which one inevitably learns to use as well as their pens and pencils (i.e. with variable yet generally adequate results), everybody seems able to work with text processing software like Word but quite often I realise that some of the key facilities may escape them. For example, even young people, seem unaware of page breaks and use instead long sequences of hard returns to move to the next page. Why haven't they learned or discovered it?

In general, becoming a good user of something complex like a smartphone or a computer program is a combination of understanding their fundamental principles and having extensive experience with their operation (and one many need more experience than another). We can teach the former and initiate the latter but one has also to keep coming back to the principles as experience grows to extend understanding of principles into a transparent framework that guides and explains operation. This is something that even university education fails to offer; what are the chances in a work environment?

In conclusion, anyone can learn BIM by spending time with it, trying things out and communicating to other users and experts. I'm not sure how far one can go without support in the form of theory and feedback from theory. What I do know is that smartphones have become so easy to learn not only because we use them all the time but also because they have developed interfaces and apps that are very limited and therefore easy to comprehend without much understanding. By contrast, BIM or text processing software are behemoths with interfaces that try to do too much and may consequently obscure many critical facilities or even intimidate users. Dissolving such software into a myriad of small apps may not be the solution but learning from the success of smartphone can only help.

Skilled BIM workers

Skilled BIM workers 

In discussions about BIM I often hear complaints that to use it properly we need extensive cultural change, especially concerning the habits and capacities of people who should work with it. People are accused of being negative and incompetent concerning innovation. It seems that it's quite hard to find people willing and capable of fully utilizing new technologies. Where does one get the skilled BIM users?

My reaction is that they should employ postal workers. When this is met with puzzlement, I explain that postal workers are fantastically good with new technologies: when I receive a package, they not only ask for confirmation of reception by offering me a mobile digital device to sign on, they also manager to process the confirmation in real time, on the cloud and in real time: within second, my confirmation appears on an online, shared information system that connects the postal services of different continents and notify every stakeholder of the action and of the new state of the project. Could one wish for more?

I hope they get it: the answer to most of our problems with new technologies and their utilization lies not in imposing new obligations and additional processes on people but in creating new, natural working environments, where on does their usual stuff with more ease and without confusion. The postal workers just deliver the package and get my signature. What happens with the delivery confirmation may be beyond their comprehension but by using the right tools, they ensure that the right thing happens. And it happens because the overall system, including the parts about human interaction, are adequately designed and implemented in an effective, efficient and generally reliable manner.

Had the postal worker been obliged to print paper forms according to some standard from the beginnings of the previous century, get signatures, dates and other processing or delivery data on them, then transcribe the data from the forms back to a computer system, we wouldn't have real-time postal tracking systems on the Internet. Many more mistakes would have been made, the personal capacities and habits of each postal worker would bear on the operation of the systems and there would have been widespread complaints from every stakeholder about the technology and its deployment.

So, how about freeing ourselves from outdated conventions and focusing on doing our jobs beyond such confines? Surely these conventions had been established to ensure that these jobs were properly done with the technologies available back then. Shouldn't we now examine what these jobs entail and how they relate to the new technologies and the societies that are already accustomed to them?

Critical or constructive?

Critical or constructive?

Having been involved in computerisation from the early days of its popularisation in the 20th century, I'm often involved in ambitious projects that aspire to develop Company 2.0 or Society 3.0 - that kind of visionary, disruptive and innovative stuff that has become so popular. My involvement is thankfully limited: brainstorms in the early, conceptual stages or evaluations at the end. I sit in conference rooms, like I did last week, and listen to big words with little understanding of the technologies involved and their possible consequences. People are drunk with the potential of their world - not specific technologies but the abstract, vague spirit of the age: AI, blockchains, BIM, social media, big data are magic wands that can transform their reality into something else, something new that will help primarily their career.

It's difficult to remain constructive under such circumstances, lacking in structure and clarity of approach. What I hear reminds me of people excitedly buying more and more stuff for their homes, gadgets and furnishings with questionable utility, without any intention of replacing old stuff, without any thought as to combine the new with the old, just overloading and cluttering their lives. Yes, one can be eclectic and promote heterogeneity into a virtue but coherence has its advantages, especially if it helps reduce cost and effort. Computerisation remains too expensive and demanding to take it as a mere collage of an ever-growing collection tools and micro-environments. It's not enough to claim that one's making a new version of the world; one has to specify this version in a coherent and comprehensive manner.

But even if I would be inclined to neglect the overall picture, it's hard not to be critical of such individual tools and micro-environments. People just buy any old thing from so-called developers and advisors (most of them are just resellers of products with added unnecessary services: servitisation is for the benefit of the seller, not of the buyer), impressed by modernity and peer acceptance. They buy things that might overlap with what they already have, things that might not do what they expect, things that might perform worse than alternatives digital or analogue. Even worse, they often seem unable to take a step back and look at the mess they're buying.

So, what am I supposed to do? The easy option is to just sit there and nod gravely, letting them do the interpretation of my silence. Yet I cannot resist attempts to make them think for themselves, to offer them some starting point for structuring and explaining their own thoughts. It seldom works; one cannot talk rationally to junkies, it appears. Let the world dissolve into tiny pieces, each governed by salespeople and PR. We're rich enough to support them all, it transpires.

Theory and representation

Theory and representation 

BIM may seem to stimulate progress but in some respects it restricts progress. In the bad old days of CAD, no-one dared suggest that CAD was anything more than a technology. This created room for theoretical and methodological development as a complement, as the underlying reasons for using computers in architecture or at least as an intelligent approach to an enabling technology. The old diptych of design and drawing was interpreted as theory and representation, allowing room for exploration that did not necessarily fit the priorities or limitations of the technology.

By being both a technology and a methodology, BIM restricts this room to within its own framework. It forces one to work with a representation that often disappoints and requires much loyalty concerning key methodical aspects. In this sense, BIM is an old-fashioned technology and approach, a largely closed (proscriptive) system. It doesn't help that the current implementations are lacking in many respects, for example the central issue of shared models: to be able to collaborate online, people have to make many concessions concerning the size of files etc.

This brings us to an interesting situation: the currently dominant technology, which theoretically promotes inclusive integration and appears progressive, seems to exclude further development and variation. Of course, some would argue that add-ons, especially parametric programming tools, allow us to solve many problems but that's not the best way forward, especially concerning representation. If BIM has given us a usable theory of design, we now need a better theory of representation.

Symbolic representation

Symbolic representation 

I've heard it more than once: "So, what's new about BIM? We've seen it all before, with CAD libraries and the like." People who say such things are not only old, usually in their sixties, but also typically people with little if any hands-on experience about what they're talking. They're not people who spend time drawing, modelling or designing with computers, otherwise they might have noticed a fundamental difference between CAD and BIM: the level of symbols used.

In CAD, the basic primitives one interacts with, the ones that carry the essential information for the representation are graphic elements: lines, shapes, surfaces etc. In that CAD follows established traditions in architectural drawings, which rely on convention to support recognition. For example, two parallel lines close to each other and with a certain length must be a wall. So, in CAD we draw these two lines with vector graphics rather than ink on paper and if we want be sure that there'll be no misinterpretations, we group them together and possibly also label them as a wall. This changes little to the basis of the representation: it's two lines.

In BIM, one may still draw lines but works directly with symbols for architectural entities: one draws a line to indicate the axis of the wall but only to enter certain geometric properties. The type of the wall, its width and layers, are defined by type and not by the other lines. The appearance of the wall may be two parallel lines but that's just one of the many possible ways the wall may be depicted. What the representation knows is that there is a wall, not two or more lines.

This doesn't make BIM better than CAD, it just brings architectural representation closer to the structure of other digital kinds. Texts, for example, have been symbolic at the level of characters from the beginning - not complex pen strokes like in joined-up writing. When I type a letter on the keyboard, what the computer retains is an ASCII code for that character, possibly dressed up with a font, size etc. Just like a wall in BIM, this dressing up determines the appearance of the character; the character is not recognised on the basis of  its appearance.

The difference between BIM and CAD is therefore one of symbol level: BIM uses symbols for architectural entities, while CAD uses general graphic symbols, those belonging to the implementation level rather than the representation proper. There may be many things wrong with BIM but that it finally gives us a symbolic digital representation for architecture is significant.

New ways

New ways 

One of the things that keep puzzling me is how presumed revolutionary solutions like BIM are deployed: almost everything remains firmly entrenched is established conventions and practices. The same old parties -the architect, the contractor, the builder- keep on doing what they've been doing, only more and with the questionable benefit of new technologies (questionable because they don't seem to get the most out of them). This doesn't seem to agree with 21st century tendencies in market and labour models: where's the outsourcing, where are new kinds of services, where is the distribution and combination of expertise? In other areas we see things change drastically through new approaches that complement the new technologies. Don't we need such structural change in the production and operation of the built environment? I've grown old waiting for the change to come from either internal motivation or from external forces but it appears that such sensibilities are not shared with the majority. So, I'm watching how people preach revolution but don't even support evolution; they just promote stagnation.

5D, 6D and even more

5D, 6D and even more 

3D goes without saying: the things architects design are made in 3D, so it's an obvious necessity. 4D is interesting, especially if the addition of the temporal dimension is not just an arbitrary time stamp but a product of interdependence between objects and actions: it's logical that a wall should be painted after it has been plastered but it does happen that even these basic things are poorly planned.

What about 5D, 6D and more - which are these dimensions, where do they come from? In most cases, 5D in BIM refers to cost. This feels like a letdown. Technically, one could find support for adding a new information type to a representation and calling it a dimension. However, looking at it from the viewpoint of semantic information, cost is derivative information: something that can be calculated on the basis of primary information, i.e. quantities and qualities in the model, contextual information that determines difficulty in execution, the need for special equipment etc. Any additional information like prices for materials and labour derive from external, linked sources rather than the model itself.

A basic rule in any information system is to never include derivative information. For example, the birth date of a person is explicitly found in a database but the age of this person is just calculated on the basis of their birth date. Similarly, in BIM the floor area of a space is not a dimension we add to the object but a calculation of two properties corresponding to two dimensions. Consequently, I'm inclined to dismiss 5D, 6D etc. in BIM as redundant and counterproductive - and I don't care to hear counterarguments about metaphors and the like: such constructs should elucidate, not obfuscate.