Adopt BIM360/ACC in 4 companies using innovative change management methods

JENS MIEDEMA: Welcome to my Autodesk university class called Innovative Change Management for Centralized Cloud Platform Adoption. My name is Jens Miedema. I am change manager at VolkerWessels.

I started my career at VolkerWessels five years ago. And after a year, I started at several construction projects in different roles, in technical roles, in process roles. And besides, a colleague and I developed an adoption approach based on a change management method for our internal digitization projects.

Today I will tell you something about change management. But what is change management? We face changes everywhere. And it's not only work-related.

It's also in our daily life-- for example, in sports. In my leisure, I like to spend time riding my road bike or riding my mountain bike. And also, in that sport there are a lot of changes happening-- changes related to material, safety rules. And it's always important that we have to communicate changes, that we have to train and learn skills about changes, that there are famous persons who stand behind the change, et cetera.

And a change is always a process at individual level. So it's not only an organizational thing, but it's always a personal level. And that is what change means to me. So today, I'm going to tell you something more about how to use proven change management methods in order to implement and adopt BIM 360 Autodesk Construction Cloud, ACC, as a new cloud platform.

So welcome. An overview of my presentation-- I will shortly tell you something about VolkerWessels, the company I work for, then the challenges we face at sector level, at organization level, at project level, and of course the people level. Then I'll move on to our change-- so what's our change about, the BIM 360 and ACC as a cloud platform.

Theoretical framework-- so more about the theory behind change management and adoption. Move on to our two solutions, or our adoption approach. And last but not least, the results-- so the benefits we get and the lessons learned.

If we take a look at the learning objectives, the first learning objective of my class is to create an adoption strategy using a proven change management method. And that's something I will tell you more about at the fourth chapter-- so the theoretical framework. The second learning objective-- conduct stakeholder analysis to identify and promote the supporters and critics is something I will go through by solutions.

The same counts for learning objective 3-- create a program of adoption activities in order to apply ADKAR to various changes. And the last learning objective is about the [INAUDIBLE] tooling complex projects with speed, efficiency, and success with up to 10% increase on productivity. And that's what the whole presentation is about.

The company I work for, VolkerWessels. VolkerWessels is a company based in the Netherlands. It's active on different markets in Germany, United Kingdom, North America, but mostly in the Netherlands. And it consists of different divisions.

The most important one is infrastructure, construction, and real estate, and energy and telecoms. And then you have the other divisions abroad. VolkerWessels consists of over 130 companies with more than 60,000 professionals, employees, and more than 25,000 projects a year. And VolkerWessels has a very clear vision about digitization.

Within the infrastructure department where I work for, we have a digitization program called Next. And that program is there to accelerate to a data-driven company and to become a digital-leading company within our sector in the Netherlands. The challenges-- as earlier mentioned, at sector level, of organization level, project, and of course, people level. I'll start at the sector level.

So within the Dutch architectural engineering and construction industry, there are a lot of research about failure costs. This is a research from ABN AMRO, a banking house, which stated that 5% of the total amount of costs of the project are failure costs. It's very hard to get a number for this. And other researches showed also the numbers like 11%. But for now, I'll keep it at 5%.

And 60% of the total lifecycle costs can be reduced due to digitization. So there's a lot of potential for digitization to reduce the cost, value of cost. So the question is do we get more projects to improve our turnover? Or do we spend less money on the projects we do right now?

Hopeful numbers. A lot of potential. But there is also a research by McKinsey in 2017-- a little bit outdated-- which stated that only 1% of productivity growth has taken place between 1997 and 2017. So there is a lot of potential left, yeah, for our sector, for our industry.

So the question is how can we really stop losing money? The challenges within our company, within our organization-- when I started my research five years ago, I took this model with three aspects during my pre-interviews. And this model tells us that to get results, you have three aspects, which are needed that the good level.

So tools and technology, process information, and people and organization. Technology is about the application. Process and information is about the process steps behind. And the people in organization-- that's about the people within our organization to get them on the track of the change.

Within the pre-interviews, I came to the conclusion that it's not really the tools and technology, and process and information what is the problem, but more the people and the organization side. So some quotes from information managers from VolkerWessels. Several tools have already improved in their added value.

So it means that the tools and technology is not a big problem. And another quote is that VolkerWessels is not aware of the soft side of collaboration. So the people on the organization side-- we don't pay enough attention to that. According to research-- this is a research by Harding-- the reality of digitization tells us that it's 10% about technology and 90% about the people side. So that's aligned with our conclusion we made within our organization that we want to focus on the people and organization side.

So we dive deeper into the people and organization side doing interviews. And we quickly came to the conclusion that we don't pay enough attention to training, to communication, that sometimes sponsor engagement lags, and that people, users are not able to change so that they don't have the right resources, don't have enough time to really change. So people in the organization was really a problem within our company.

From challenges to our change-- the change we want to make. BIM 360/ACC as a cloud platform-- in the current state, we have a local storage drive. Or that was the current state, with the consequences that there is a lot of miscommunication, that there are multiple versions of drawings of PDFs. And there is a lot of loss of information.

The future state-- so that is that BIM 360/ACC as a cloud platform. And the benefits of such a system as a cloud platform is that every team member has always access to the models, to the data. There's one way of working within our organization.

As earlier mentioned, our organization consists of a lot of companies which always have an own way of working. But in this case, we make one way of working for full capacity infrastructure. And another thing is that we can connect the data to other data platforms, like a digital expectation application, which we also developed maybe in the future.

At the right side, you see a picture of BIM 360. So that's a system where drawings can be uploaded. And comments can be made by different team members. So it's a very smart system we use now.

So one thing I want to add to the sheet-- when the improvement is recognizable, we want to make an improvement on the process. So the process has to be smarter, better, more efficient. We have to have a target for the users so that the system will be used and that the users will be satisfied about the solution.

So I'll come back to that later. Two things for us-- one is recognizable improvement that took place. OK, moving on to theoretical framework then-- the theory of change management and adoption. First, a glass of water.

Some background about change management-- why do we want to apply change management? As earlier mentioned, it's the people side of change which lacks at our organization. So we wanted to do something. And we dive deeper into change management and adoption.

Four primary reasons to apply change management. It's to increase the probability of project success. So that's not a construction project or infrastructure project, but the internal improvement project, like BIM 360. Very important one to manage employee resistance to change.

So within our adoption approach, we think about resistance we can expect from different target groups, and also think about the resistance killers we can set up. The third thing is to capture people-dependent return on investment. We often forget what the change costs and what it brings to us and the gap between.

Yeah, often, we look back two years later after it changed. And we think, yeah, are we satisfied? What does it bring us? It's not really clear.

And we have to think about it from the start. And the last one is to build the change competence within our organization. We have a lot of changes facing within our company, not only BIM 360, but also earlier mentioned, the digital expectation application. Then there are a lot of more internal projects, where change comes into our organization.

So that's an important one, to do change in a standard way of working, and not every time. And that's another [INAUDIBLE]. OK, then I'll move on to the PCT model-- the Prosci Change Triangle.

It's a model for change at organizational level. And it tells us that there are three aspects to get successful change. At first, start with good leadership sponsorship.

So a person who stands behind the change and can make hard decisions if needed. Project management-- that's the project management for the internal improvement projects, not the construction project outside. And the third one is change management.

That could be, for example, the change manager who will see the change in the eyes of the end users or from a different perspective than the product owner or the key users, who are already familiar with the change. So that's an important role of the change manager. Now we did this assessment within our company.

And we often see this result. Project management is no problem. We have enough product owners or project leaders, managers for our internal projects. And sponsorship leadership is also not really a problem. Sometimes, it could be better, but it's not the biggest problem.

But change management-- yeah, we don't pay attention to that before. So yeah, that is a problem. So this is organizational when it comes to individual change. Yeah, at first you see our already mentioned change is about personal process.

We have another model. And that's called ADKAR. It tells us that for a change, you need to be aware of the change. So you need to know what the reason is to change. Why do we need to change? And what is it?

And then desire-- and what's in it for me? So you know what's in it for me. And you want to be part of the change.

Knowledge-- to train and learn skills in order to execute the change. To be able to execute the change-- so get the right resources, the right coaching and off time. And the last one-- the reinforcement, to embed the change. So celebrate successes, and holding on to change.

And it looks like a linear process. It isn't, in practice. It's more an iterative process. You can have a training where you can be aware of the change. Then get in contact with the coach who helps you with the change.

And then you understand the "what's in it for me" of the change. So it can be more an iterative process than a linear process. More important-- how to achieve this?

The theory-- how to achieve this. The blocks of ADKAR are below each other now. And within our adoption approach to get awareness, we have to do communication. So we have to communicate messages on different platforms for different people, maybe different messages for different target groups.

Another thing is sponsors to get a podium for your change. Also, coaching-- use coaches to help people out if they don't want to change or they don't see why and what the change is. And measurement-- always facts and numbers helps us to be aware of why this change is happening.

Desire-- we get desire when sponsors help the people to know what's in it for them, for the target group. We have to think about resistance or what resistance can we expect from different target groups and how to kill the resistance. So we really know the "what's in it for me" then.

And also, measurement-- if you have facts and numbers, why the change will help you-- people understand the "what's in it for me" better and want to be able, often want to be part of the change. Knowledge-- we can get knowledge by coaching, so one-on-one coaching or group coaching. And of course, training-- to make training for different people.

Ability is also an important one for coaching. So if there are any questions or people stuck within their change, it's really helpful if coaches help those people. And the last one-- reinforcement. It's important to measure the change or the return on investment.

The key performance indicators at the baselines are where-- what is the measurement at the start, the baseline measurement? And what is the measurement during the change, and after the change? And what brings the change to us?

And communicate that back to the people. And also celebrate successes to the people is an important one here. And these six tracks-- communication, sponsors, coaching, resistance training, and measurements make the success campaign. We call it the success campaign within our adoption approach.

And the success campaign is an activity program based on six tracks, which you can run through during a change. I will show you later an example of this. By doing this, the individual results, individual process of change, the five blocks, we achieve by doing the success campaign activities on the six tracks. And that will result in a balanced PCT model.

So change management will be at the good level, which will result in successful changes. This is also a little bit theory-- but now, we're going into practice. So the solutions-- our adoption approach.

Our adoption approach consists of four phases. It starts with the preparation phase. The team have to be formed.

We always have a product owner or business change owner who is responsible for the change within the specific business unit. And we have key uses. The goals have to be set. The schedule has to be made.

Yeah, and everyone within the change team needs to be at the same page of the change. So that's what we do in the preparation phase. In the analyze phase, we take some time to analyze the change very, very well. We do some workshops.

I have an example of a workshop with a quick video. So we stick Post-Its here with the change team. Why the change is happening, what the current situation is. What is the change?

Why is it changing? But what does not change? What if we do not change?

Also, the target groups are for who gets the change. We think about the resistance we can expect from the different target groups and how to treat the resistance, or the resistance killers. In another workshop, we think about the desired situation of the change, the desired behavior, and the key performance indicators.

So when are we satisfied after the change? So this is an example of a workshop we do within Miro. And we have a lot of other workshops during the analyze phase-- so also a workshop for training.

So what kind of training has to be made for specific target groups? Also, a workshop about communications, or what communication messages has to be made for the several target groups. And a workshop about return on investment. So that's the analyze phase.

Then we move on to the develop phase. And within the develop phase, we have a lot of information about the change. And we develop the success campaign. And I will show you an example of the success campaign. It's an activity program on six tracks-- so communication, sponsor, coaching, resistance, training, and measurement.

And there are three phases-- so preparation before the change goes live-- during phase, so when the change is live, and after the change, or the embedding phase. For example, within communication, we did a roadshow. We did webinars for BIM 360/ACC.

For coaching, we started a BIM 360 community. And we organized some flow working hours for our employees when there are questions. At the training track, we made an e-learning in our academy.

And for measurement, we measure baseline. And so key performance indicators we measured at baseline. And we also measure it after the change and during the change.

So these are some examples of activities of the success campaign. I deleted a lot of activities to make it presentable, but it gives an idea to what you can do within these six tracks during a change. The last phase-- the fourth phase-- is the execute phase.

You have to run through your success campaigns or every activity within your success campaign. You have to execute. And it always ends with an evaluation with the change team. And you can redo the process if the change is changing or you have other target work or something like that.

Let's move on to the results, the benefits, and the lessons learned. I'll start with the qualitative results. One year after the start of the change of the program, the product owner would then assess-- told us that this was a common approach with a clear explanation of what, when, and why change is happening, helped us to communicate and manage expectations with all stakeholders. So it helped him that he had the standard approach to manage the change for all the different stakeholders.

So he was he was quite satisfied with the adoption approach. The business change owner told us that he also was happy with it. The adoption approach helped us communicate and manage expectations within my business unit, as well as aligning with other stakeholders-- so the other business units within VolkerWessels's infrastructure.

We have been working with a clear end in mind. And that's also a thing we-- with the success campaign, you have a start. And you have an end. And at the end, you turn it over to the maintenance phase of the change. And the change is really ending.

And I also have quotes from a 3D modeler about the change we made, so the BIM 360 change. He was very happy with this change, because all disciplines work in one platform. And the entire team has access to the current models and properties. And the possibilities as you're reviewing within BIM 360 saves the whole team a lot of time and money.

So both the adoption approach and the change we made were very good results, I think. I also have some quantitative results. And the target for us was that we wanted 1,500 users within BIM 360. We are now with 1,700 users. So that's more than the target.

The amount of projects-- we have more than 400 projects within BIM 360. And the target was 150. So yeah, that's very good.

And we have done time optimisation for project and design manager related to coordination and review of 10%. So that's also a very nice result of this change. And 72% of the users indicated that BIM 360 had a positive impact within our organization, within our projects. It really helped us to do coordination, and review, and to work better and more efficient.

Was it all good? No. [CHUCKLES] We also have some lessons learned. Yeah, the issues of today-- the projects.

It's always an important lesson learned, an important struggle within our company, within our sector. Our projects have always the priority above internal improvement projects. So yeah, it's really important to have a person within a change who drives the tasks of the business change, or of the key users in order to keep momentum of the change.

The second lesson learned is we have to implement immediately at the start of a project. So not only at the sideline of an organization of a project-- that's always at the beginning of a project. There, we can make the difference. So that's also an important one.

And the last one-- to be flexible with the adoption plan and with the change team, because during the change of a year, a lot of other changes are happening-- organizational changes. But also, the change is sometimes changing. And you have to be flexible with your adoption plan, with your success campaign, and with your change team to adapt on that.

I want to end this class with this wrap-up. So I told you something about the challenges we face, the change we wanted to make, the theoretical framework, the solutions, and the results, and the learning objectives to create an adoption strategy using a proven change management method. It's explained.

And also, the other three learning objectives have been passed. So I want to end this presentation with a quote of John Kotter, famous of another change management method I used during my thesis. And it says, "The speed of change is the driving force. Leading change competently is the only answer."

And I think with our adoption approach, we can achieve this. So thank you for this presentation, or for your attending. This was my presentation.