In one line: BIM rollouts rarely fail because people reject the tool. They stall in the dip, after the training, once the model is live, where the work has increased but the payoff hasn't shown up yet. Nobody quits the tool; they just stop opening it. The fix is protecting your champions and engineering the moments that prove value.
“I spent a year implementing a system that five people use, and fifty people try to avoid.��, BIM Manager, Geneva
This past quarter, the Catenda team met BIM practitioners in Geneva, Vienna, Basel and Vilnius. The conversations covered a lot of ground: open standards, AI in construction, vendor lock-in. But one topic kept surfacing regardless of the city: change management.
Not in a theoretical way. In a “we've tried everything and people still send markups by email” kind of way.
Welcome to Common Ground, where we share insights from BIM and digital construction leaders across Europe. It's not about Catenda. It's about you and what we learn when we meet up. Change management is where we start, because it came up in every single city.
You've done the training. Templates are ready. The model is live. Half the project team is still sending markups by email.
The real problem isn't the software, the mandate, or the people. It's that the old workflow still works. Not well, but well enough. And “well enough” beats “requires more effort” every time, at least until something shifts.
The Kübler-Ross change curve is useful here. Most people assume the danger zone is the early resistance stage. The harder truth is that most rollouts fail later, in the dip where adoption is underway but the payoff hasn't materialized yet. People are doing more work for results that don't yet feel noticeably better. Momentum drops.
Nobody quits the tool. They just stop opening it.
The curve runs through seven stages, shock, denial, frustration, acceptance, experimentation, realisation, integration, with a low point in the middle often called the Valley of Tears. BIM adoption is a change project, and it lives or dies in that valley.
Two practical tips came up repeatedly at our recent community events.
In Vienna, a head of digitalization described something we've heard echoed elsewhere: in every rollout, two or three people just get it. They figure out the tool faster, help colleagues, and become the informal reference point for anyone with a question. They're doing their job plus change-management work, and nobody acknowledges the second part.
Research on how new practices spread through organizations consistently identifies these early adopters as a small minority, the people who carry the change forward before the majority follows. The mistake organizations make is treating them as a free resource.
Getting this right means actively protecting the early adopters. One BIM Manager described blocking two hours a week in three colleagues' calendars. That small change kept the rollout on track, not because it was a lot of time, but because it made the informal role legitimate.
Your champions are already doing the work. Give them the cover to keep doing it.
The most effective rollouts don't wait for the model to prove its value, they create the conditions for a specific moment.
A BIM Manager in Geneva described showing up to a project review with an issue summary that took her minutes to produce, something that would have taken a coordinator an afternoon to compile from emails and spreadsheets. She didn't frame it as a demo. She just answered the question. Within a month, the project director was asking for it every week.
Don't wait for management to care. Show them that they should.
Because the old workflow still works “well enough”. Failure usually isn't outright rejection, it's a quiet stall after go-live, when people are doing more work but haven't yet felt the payoff. They don't quit the tool; they just stop opening it.
Later than most people expect. The common assumption is that the risk is early resistance. In practice, rollouts more often stall in the dip on the change curve, the Valley of Tears where adoption is underway but the benefit hasn't landed and momentum drops.
It's a model of how people move through change, from shock and denial through a low point to acceptance, experimentation and integration. Applied to BIM, it explains why enthusiasm fades in the middle of a rollout and how to plan for that dip instead of being surprised by it.
Two moves work in the field: protect your champions by making their informal support role legitimate (for example, blocking a couple of hours a week for it), and engineer concrete “aha” moments where the new way visibly answers a real question faster than the old way.
They're the two or three people in any rollout who grasp the tool quickly and become the informal help desk for everyone else. They carry the change before the majority follows. Treating them as a free resource burns them out; protecting their time keeps adoption moving.
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