A sociomateriality view of boundary spanning in BIM-enabled early facilities management involvement

In the face of steadily increasing project complexity, it is vital for project stakeholders to collaborate. However, the delivery of architectural, construction, and engineering projects has long been criticized as fragmented. After years of design and construction, a building needs to be operated and maintained for decades or even longer. Inadequate consideration of long-term facilities management (FM) in the early project phases could result in the sorts of failures that are widely documented in reports and the literature. Early facilities management involvement (EFMI) aims to overcome the fragmentation of traditional project delivery. However, stakeholders’ highly specialized professional backgrounds and the conventional political status of FM create boundaries between stakeholders, increase technical and political boundary complexities, and hinder knowledge integration in EFMI boundary spanning. Technological artifacts, such as building information modeling (BIM)-enabled artifacts, are expected to serve as boundary objects and thus foster boundary spanning. Nevertheless, the understanding of boundary spanning and the effects of technological boundary objects is incomplete across the literature. There have long been calls to fully explain the multiple boundary complexities and technical-political interweaving involved in boundary spanning. The mechanisms by which boundary objects facilitate bridging boundaries are far from well-established. Motivated by practical challenges and research gaps, this research aims to explore how technological artifacts (boundary objects) and project stakeholders (boundary spanners) intertwine in boundary spanning from the perspectives of technical and political ecologies through the theoretical lens of sociomateriality. Adopting a critical realist perspective, a qualitative strategy was applied. Firstly, preliminary semi-structured interviews were conducted to gain an industry-wide overview of EFMI and BIM-enabled EFMI adoption, alongside two pilot cases for more details of BIM-enabled EFMI implementation within specific project contexts. Based on the empirical findings and the thereby refined theoretical framework, an exploratory multiple-case study was employed using two BIM-enabled EFMI projects. The key findings are twofold. Regarding interweaving between technological boundary objects and boundary spanners across technical and political ecologies, this research unveils how spanners acquire political authority and legitimacy through symbolic, economic, and intelligent capital. Legitimacy of boundary spanners is influenced by their levels of technical ability. Moreover, different technical focuses on boundary objects may cause tensions between boundary spanners with overlapping political abilities, and boundary objects can play essential roles in tension resolutions. Regarding interweaving within the technical ecology, this research provides empirical support for and theoretical insights into how and why the perceived effectiveness of a boundary object in boundary spanning is a spectrum of affordance and constraint across a continuum. The level of affordance is influenced by multiple factors, including the degree to which a boundary object narrows knowledge gaps between spanners. This research extends the existing research agenda by deliberating on technical-political interweaving and enriches the interweaving mechanism within the technical ecology. It advances the understanding of boundary spanning and boundary objects’ role from an ecological perspective and also enlightens stakeholders on EFMI adoption and technology-facilitated collaboration.