A “Knot” – breaking the inertia in construction?

The aim of this paper is to contribute to new collaborative processes in construction practice, which are challenged by a traditional understanding of teams in construction project management. A dynamic innovative and open-ended expansive process is requested and badly needed. The development and implementation of new technology require a parallel process of developing the use of technology and the social processes of its use. Knotworking represents a distributed collaborative expertise in pursuit of a task that is organised among designers from different design disciplines and other players in a construction process. In Finland and Denmark experiments with Knotworking is being developed and tested: Experiments with Knots, how can it change or create new objects and solutions in construction?
The method of the study is action research and applied ethnography that is a practice-oriented approach to contribute to change processes. The degree of authors’ participation varied from being a facilitator, consultant or observer in the Danish case and from being a facilitator and observant in the Finnish case. The data collection was a participant observation in a Finish and Danish case. The participants of the experiments were architects, contractors, energy specialists, HVAC design engineers, structural engineers, a cost calculator, representatives of property owners and researchers. The data was saved in digital format using several video cameras. We also gathered BIM documents, process charts, advisors’ reports and photographs.
Experiments with Knots have the potential to break inertia in construction, multiple solutions will persist and it implies learning by experimenting with the new practice. The Knots are organised to solve specific problems or tasks requiring multidisciplinary expertise. Working with Knots as a successful process requires intensive collaboration across organizational boundaries and hierarchies through object-oriented actions, i.e. objects of activities that include both material and cognitive constructions which lead to entail directionality, purpose, and meaning to collective activities.