To enact real change for the better in your company, you have to be willing to commit even if it results in some pain up front.

While it sounds like a meaningless platitude, that statement has a truth at its core, and can be particularly useful in bringing about effective change to foster productivity gains or greater beneficial outcomes for clients.

Changing the way in which a firm works is mostly about cultural change rather than the technological or systematic change as it is perceived. So driving a change to BIM as a method of delivery supported by technology has very little to do with the software or the workflows, although they are necessary. It is almost entirely about the cultural change needed for the company to adopt the change itself.

So who must change and how do you activate the change?

With the maxim, ‘For change to be real, you must make real changes,’ it is crucial to go to the client to drive change as it is their requirements which will ultimately change the deliverable. This in turn changes the supply chain culture, which in turn changes both the company and the individual.

So what types of changes can a company make to activate real changes internally to support new requirements or deliverables? Going to the core triggers within the tendering systems is the place where a project is born for most consultants and contractors. What button, line, instruction, or protocol must be adjusted to include that simple few words which will trigger the change?

BIM for example, is an 11th hour addition to most bids as there is generally no mechanism within the traditional approach to tendering which activates the need to ask someone about BIM and its relation to the project at the relevant stage in the bidding process.

Let’s imagine if a bid were built around the assumption that BIM were the core methodology. It then becomes the rule rather than the exception.

For change to be real (i.e. make a difference), you must make real change (i.e. difficult decisions). In the case of BIM within your organisation, this is either wholeheartedly or not at all. Another truth is that a change that is made in name only is no change at all.

What is the core change your firm must make to activate digital delivery within your supply change or enable digital delivery internally?