Knotworking - A novel BIM-based collaboration practice in building design projects

Knotworking represents a distributed collaborative expertise in pursuit of a task that is organized among designers from different design disciplines. Construction processes involve phases and tasks that cannot be solved in one organization only, as integration of expert knowledge from various sources is needed. Through knotworking, groups of people, tasks and tools are set to work intensively for a short period of time to solve a problem or accomplish a task. Knotworking requires intensive collaboration across organizational boundaries and hierarchies. The practice of knotworking has been developed and applied in the development of healthcare organizations, libraries and school-university relationships, but it has not previously been applied in the construction industry. In this paper, we describe the concept of knotworking and the findings of a case study that we completed in the Finnish construction industry. We will also compare the similarities and differences of the Big Room and knotworking in terms of participants, duration, target, space/infrastructure, benefits and challenges. Finally, we present some suggestions for further research and experimentation on knotworking in construction projects.