Boundary Spanning in BIM-enabled Early Facilities Management Involvement: From A Sociomaterial Perspective

Abstract

<p>Due to mistakes, omissions, and inadequate considerations in previous phases, the project operational phase has been placed heavy burdens, which can be effectively mitigated by involving specialists with post-occupancy knowledge in the design process, known as early facilities management involvement (EFMI). Diverse and extensive pieces of knowledge, which reside with different stakeholders, are needed in the EFMI collaboration. It has been proven that boundaries between highly specialized stakeholders impede cross-discipline collaboration and knowledge sharing. In this case, both endeavors from building information modeling (BIM)-enabled artifacts and stakeholders are entailed in bridging boundaries, which serve as boundary objects and boundary spanners, respectively. However, the effectiveness of BIM-enabled artifacts in improving knowledge sharing has been debated. The boundary-spanning mechanisms have been far from well-established. This study aims to explore how BIM-enabled artifacts play a role in boundary spanning under the EFMI context. Sociomateriality is adopted as the underlying theoretical lens. A qualitative strategy following critical realism was applied. Moreover, a case study was employed, in which a newly-build stadium project was investigated. Findings reveal that boundary objects can display inherent incompleteness and induce spanners to raise questions. More importantly, the effectiveness of boundary objects in boundary spanning is significantly influenced by the degree to which boundary objects serve to narrow knowledge gaps between spanners and support core technical abilities, which concern the knowledge amount and types of spanners. By providing theoretical and practical deliberations of boundary spanning, this study mitigates the debate around the benefits of boundary objects and enriches the existing literature on how knowledge boundaries are bridged and how boundary objects and spanners intertwine. Also, it enlightens practitioners on EFMI adoption and technology-enabled collaboration.</p>