Look in the mirror
In 2008, Domino’s faced declining sales due to customer dissatisfaction with its pizza. The company did something many didn’t expect — they looked in the mirror and they owned it.
The company overhauled its recipe, revamped key ingredients, and launched a bold marketing campaign admitting and owning their shortcomings. This transparency resonated with consumers, and the company has been one of the biggest turnaround stories in recent memory.
Holding up the mirror to AEC
If we hold up the mirror to AEC what do we see? AEC incumbents shares many parallels with Domino's, frustrated and vocal users, but their response couldn't be more different. A lack of response casts a big shadow on the industry as a whole and unfortunately the industry itself is the one who suffers here.
- A lack of techincal innovation leaves AEC with the perception of the "slow" industry
- Projects just feel harder than they need to
- Teams spend more time on busy work and less time on work that lights them up
To get into the weeds a bit, there are a number of "bad ingredients" that haven't been overhauled.
- File-Based Systems Are a Bottleneck
- Traditional BIM tools rely on file-based workflows, limiting real-time collaboration. Teams are stuck managing version control, exporting files, and waiting for updates. More meetings, more emails.
- BIM is Stuck in Single-Player Mode
- BIM is a solo experience for a collaborative task. By default teams work in silos, leading to misalignment, rework, and inefficiencies. This will never work.
- Desktop-First Tools Limit Global Teams
- AEC is more global than ever, with firms collaborating across time zones. Yet, most BIM tools remain desktop-bound, restricting accessibility and real-time coordination.
What if we rewrote BIM
So what if we were to throw out everything we knew about BIM — what might that look like? What areas would we proiritize?
I believe if we rewrote BIM the most improtant thing to consider would be collaboration.
Buildings are products that are built by thousands of people — AEC is the most collaborative industry in the world. Yet the entire industry runs on emails, PDFs and meetings.
Collaboration is a word that can be thrown around too easily—but to be extremely clear collaboration is not sharing a file so that someone else can update another file somewhere else and get back to you in a week.
Real collaboration is about people working together naturally with their work be connected parts of a greater whole. There are countless examples of Companies and Industries that have figured collaboration out:
- 🏗️ Palfinger, a global leader in crane and lifting solutions. They saw the need to streamline how they managed projects — and did so by collaborating with Smartsheet a collaborative planning software. This shift enhanced efficiency, access to information and standardized communication.
- 🖥️ Figma is known for revolutionizing how products are designed with browser-based tools — they used their own tool and Asana to cut meeting times by 50% through open design and project collaboration.
- 💳 Coupa, a leader in business spend management, sought to improve project management to democratize tracking initiatives across teams. This integration led to a 658% increase in time savings over three years, improved visibility for leadership, and more objective project prioritization, streamlining operations and enhancing transparency. 
The through line in all of these stories getting teams on the same page and bringing together true collaboration. AEC is overdue to learn this lesson.
In part 2 I'll unpack the future we picture at Arcol more. Stay tuned.
🍕 I’m going to go order a pizza from Dominoes now.