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Recent critiques of the BIM literature describe it as largely devoid of critical theoretical perspectives and theorisation capable of explaining the nature of change in work practices in a holistic manner. In response, the authors argue from a theoretical standpoint, that implementing BIM within professional work practices (as activity systems) induces their evolution through dysfunctions created within the systems and their resolution. Cases of professional organisations in South Africa that have implemented BIM within their organisation and in multi-organisational projects, helped to develop new theoretical insights into how professional work practices evolve using activity theory-based re-description of the data. Changes in professional work practices were analysed sequentially within the framework, confirming theoretical propositions and revealing the dynamics between and within the interconnected system of actors, their object, tools, rules guiding work, roles they assume, and the stakeholders. Essentially, the findings imply that the implementation ofBIM significantly changes work practices within organisations, but gradually and over time. This supports an evolutionary, rather than a radical or revolutionary, view ofBIM-induced change. This theoretical perspective could explain future dimensions of change in professional work practices involving BIM, and indeed similar work mediating tools.

Purpose Critics of claims about building information modeling’s (BIM’s) capability to revolutionize construction industry practices describe it as overhyped, fallacious and therefore suggest that there is need for a more critical examination of its change impacts. Others have posited that the changes BIM induces are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. In this vein, the purpose of this paper was to undertake a careful analysis of the nature of such changes to distil actual changes that happened, and the type of agency that brings such changes about. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from appropriate qualitative research strategies, data was collected through key informant interviews from consulting organizations in South Africa that have implemented BIM within their organizations and on projects. Findings Changes in organizations’ work practices were evident in their workflows, formal/informal methods of interaction, norms, leadership and authority structures, remuneration and the way work was conceived or conceptualized. Furthermore, changes in organizational work practices do not solely occur through the direct agency of the BIM tool’s implementation. Instead, BIM-induced change occurs by delegated, conditional and needs-based agency – which are not mutually exclusive. Originality/value The nature of changes in professional work practices could be misconstrued as being solely because of the actions of agents who actively participate in implementing BIM. The discussion in the literature has, therefore, been advanced from general to specific theoretical understandings of BIM-induced change, which emphasize the need for construction stakeholders to actively participate in developing the innovations that drive change in the industry rather than hand the power to drive change to BIM authoring and management application developers who have less stake in the industry.

Dependency structure matrix (DSM) concepts have been applied effectively to represent and manage complex design processes. However, the author's attempts to implement the concepts on large construction projects faced limitations. The key limitation was that the identification of elements for activity DSM at the appropriate level of abstraction required significant levels of expertise. As drawings are well-defined entities that are directly identifiable by the design team, this paper proposes that drawing DSM (DDSM) be used to manage the design process. Further, as drawing production is a complex task containing many subactivities, a structured method is required to identify the dependencies between the drawings. Based on a systems approach, a three-stage structured methodology to decompose the project and identify the drawing interfaces is developed. The conceptual details of this methodology are explained and the steps are illustrated using a generic example. The paper also presents the application of the methodology to an airport project and discusses the results obtained as well as the necessary future improvements.