Liminal roles in construction project practice: exploring change through the roles of partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator

Abstract

Industries have to adapt to changes in external environment. This adaption includes the development of new professional roles that challenge established structures, roles and communities of practice. In order to better understand the unfolding of construction project practice in an increasingly changeful world new professional roles are explored as liminal roles. The studied professional roles are partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator. Liminality is used as framework to understand descriptions of liminal experiences when negotiating boundary interfaces in construction project practice. Findings are both theoretical and practical and suggest that new professional roles practice multi-liminal work and acknowledge tensions that pose challenges for liminal roles to act as change agents.

Keywords:

• Roles
• building information modelling
• logistics
• partnering
• change management
• liminality

Introduction

In order to be viable and competitive, industries and organizations have to adapt to what happens in the external environment (Lawrence and Lorsch 1976). The construction industry, albeit often being described as conservative and reluctant to changes, adapt to external environment’s requirements by, for example, increased use of collaborative approaches in order to support inter-organizational integration, innovation and learning (Bygballe et al. 2010, Eriksson 2010, Lahdenperä 2012). Another example is the intensified work on supply chain management and the development of coordinated building logistics to support a more efficient production process, improve safety on construction sites and reduce environmental impact (Vrijhoef and Koskela 2000, Ekeskär and Rudberg 2016). A third example, which gain increased attention in construction project management research and practice, and which the construction industry has in common with most other industries and organizational settings, is adaption to digitalisation. Implementing Building Information Modeling (BIM) and adjusting business models to new digital technology challenge norms and established ways of working in construction (Gilkingson et al. 2015, Bosch-Sijtsema et al. 2017, Vass and Karrbom Gustavsson 2017).

When applying project partnering, developing coordinated building logistics and implementing BIM established power structures, practices and professional roles are challenged. This takes place in day-to-day work practice when negotiating boundary interfaces and institutionalizing new structures, practices and professional roles (Powell and DiMaggio 1991). A role can be defined as a position occupied by an individual in the context of social relationship and it may be a site of tensions and role conflict (Swan et al. 2016) However, roles can also be enacted when individuals make sense of them (Borg and Söderlund 2015) which shed light on, for example, ambiguity and isolation.

From a contingency perspective, structures, practises and roles are never fixed or finally defined, but continuously change when industries and organizations adapt to new external and internal situations and needs. Hence, investigating new professional roles as boundary roles negotiating boundary interfaces provides accounts of construction industry change as it unfolds in project practice. Such investigation responds to a call for more studies on “the emergence of new professional roles in construction and how these challenge old power bases and professional expertise” (Gluch 2009, p. 967).

Exploring and understanding change from a contingency perspective means to acknowledge that change is dynamic, and in order to understand dynamic change the concept of liminality is used as framework. The liminality concept helps to address and advance various aspects related to challenges associated with an increasingly changeful world (Söderlund and Borg 2017). Liminality is commonly understood as a transitory stage characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty through which the individual or community passes (Turner 1967). From this perspective, liminality is confined in time and space. In contrast to the idea of liminality as a transitory stage that can be passed through and completed once and of all, McCabe and Briody (2016, p. 2) suggest to “conceive of liminality as a fluent state, or situation, where one is constantly moving between different worlds”. Professional roles that engage in project practice that require translation of at least some aspects of the world-views of other professional roles move across boundaries translating meaning from one context to the other.

Aim and questions

In their recent work on liminality Söderlund and Borg (2017) argue for more studies on how individuals view liminal experience, how it is perceived when it unfolds and what tensions are involved in liminal experience. The aim here is to contribute to fill this gap by exploring liminal roles in construction project practice. The research questions that guide this exploration are: How do individuals engaged in liminal work experience liminal roles? And, what tensions are involved in liminal works in construction project practice?

Findings are based on empirical data from two case studies in Sweden: a construction project with high partnering and design ambitions and an urban development project including a multitude of parallel and succeeding construction projects. Since large public clients initiated both projects, the empirical limitation is public client initiated liminal work. Findings show how liminal work is experienced and what tensions are involved and provide knowledge about the unfolding of contemporary construction project practice and norms (Styhre 2011a) and acknowledge the dynamics of liminal work. Findings also provide insights to the growing literature on projects as continuously changing practices (e.g. Cicmil et al. 2006, Blomquist et al. 2010).

The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Before presenting the method and findings, a literature overview on studies of temporary, flexible and mobile workers in liminal situations will follow before a more thorough description of liminality is presented, including how it may serve as framework to theorize liminal roles and liminal movement. The findings then present descriptions of liminal experiences and tensions in liminal work. The paper ends with discussion, conclusion and contribution.

Literature overview

The literature on temporary and mobile workers acting in liminal situations negotiating boundaries is extensive (for a comprehensive review, see Söderlund and Borg 2017). The literature overview presented here focus on studies of consultants in general and of construction project professionals acting in inter-organizational roles in particular.

Studies of consultants have gained much attention. In her study Garsten (1999) describe consultants as liminal subjects in temporary organizations while Czarniawska and Mazza (2003) view consulting as a liminal space. In their study, Sturdy and Wright (2011) shift focus from the consultant to the client of management consultancy and view the active client as a key agent in managing and mediating knowledge flows across organizational boundaries.

Borg and Söderlund (2015) also study consultants, more specifically technical consultants. In their study technical consultants are understood as mobile project workers and in focus are the individuals and their ability to handle fluid and flexible work conditions. Findings include three levels of liminality competence; on one level there are mobile project workers who typically make use of the possibilities that liminality offers, on another level there are mobile project workers that try to reduce or completely avoid liminality. Finally, on a third level there are those who experience the freedom of liminality, which seems to liberate them from various structural obligations. While liminality has been found to be a source of “creative/learning potential” (e.g. Sturdy et al. 2009), Borg and Söderlund (2015) found that it has also been associated with negative consequences as a result of lack of affiliation, weakened power and reduced access to opportunities for learning.

There is also research on liminal work outside the consultancy context, for example a recent study on the growing temporary and mobile workforce of hotel workers (e.g. Underthun and Jordhus-Lier 2018). There is also recent research on coordinators within organizations (e.g. Swan et al. 2016). In their study on organizational roles on intra-organizational level Swan et al. (2016) link liminality and creative agency and present five practices in which coordinators enact their roles: developing membership, facilitating engagement, stewarding the purpose, advocating the community and documenting outcomes.

Construction project practice is yet another empirical context for studying liminal work. This context has similarities to the consultancy context, for example that clients often procure external experts. A similarity to most temporary and flexible work context (Karrbom Gustavsson 2016) is that construction project practice is heterogeneous and composed of a wide variety of professional fields (Räisänen and Löwstedt 2014) and a multitude of professional communities of practice with institutional roles that are established and which guide social behaviour (Ruikar et al. 2009). Because change is taking place in practice when people socially interact and “need to make sense of voids of meaning and challenges to their cultural environment” (Horvath et al. 2015, p. 2), new professional roles in construction practice are suggested to take on boundary roles which require the ability to negotiate boundary interfaces, both intra and inter-organisationally (Dainty et al. 2006, Fellows and Liu 2012).

There is a growing interest in the unfolding of construction project practices, for example the unfolding of new environmental professionals (e.g. Gluch 2009) and the “stakes and struggles” that take place in liminal spaces during consultant interventions (e.g. Räisänen and Löwstedt 2014). There is also research on the conversational practices of coordination of expertise in design team meetings as an example of situated methods by which activities are produced (e.g. Boudeau 2013).

Gluch (2009) show how contradictory practices prevent environmental professionals from fulfilling their role and function in the projects. This was due to tensions created by, for example, different world-views and communication cultures. In these situations, environmental professionals developed alternative identities to adapt, a strategy that contributed to further fragmentation between practices and professions. Findings present four aspects that affect the professional’s role: relational and positional power, professional identity, visibility and the facilitation of meaning-making processes.

Räisänen and Löwstedt (2014) use the concept of liminality to frame the intervention practice when examining the unfolding of the interaction at the boundary interface. In focus are the stakes and struggles between management consultants and construction managers at three managerial levels on strategic away-days. The management consultants neglected to form a contract with the construction practitioners which made they failed the game due to their total lack of situated knowledge in construction. The construction practitioners used strategies to discredit the consultant by attacking the consultants’ language, their managerial jargon and theoretical model, and by commenting on their lack of knowledge of construction. Findings conclude that the strong individual and group identification with a construction-practitioner habitus made the construction practitioners superior. Also, viewing the construction industry as “special”, “unique” or “distinctive” is often seen as an obstacle for innovation and learning.

Boudeau (2013) contradict traditional rational, abstract and formal views on the coordination of work and expertise by arguing for examining the actual coordination practices. The study shows that the coordination of expertise relied on, and was organized by, mundane and everyday methods. Also, the coordination of expertise was inherent in the ways in which experts interacted with and talked to each other.

The studies by Gluch (2009) and Räisänen and Löwstedt (2014) show tensions between institutionalized professional roles and established professional communities of practice in construction project practice and the study by Boudeau (2013) show that the coordination of different expertise was inherent to the ways in which experts interacted with and talked to each other.

Framework

This section first presents the concept of community of practice as described by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998). Then follows the concept of liminality, first as a “rite of passage” (Turner 1980) and then as “a fluent state” (McCabe and Briody 2016). Finally follows three categories of liminality, i.e. liminal process, liminal position and liminal place, as defined by Söderlund and Borg (2017).

By the concept communities of practice is meant systems of relationships between people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared knowledge domain or area of interest (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998). Communities of practice develop in social settings, either physical or virtual, through the sharing of information and experience and they are closely knit social groups with a long history of practising or collaborating together and they have developed shared identity and understandings (Lindkvist 2005).

The concept of liminality has its roots in social anthropology first developed by Arnold van Gennep when reporting on ritual behaviour and the dynamics of individual and collective life (Horvath et al. 2015). Liminality is used to describe change and periods of ambiguity and uncertainty (Beech 2011) and it is often seen as capturing “in-between” situations and conditions that are characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the exchange of hierarchies, and the uncertainty about the continuity of institutionalized norms and traditions (Horvath et al. 2015).

Hence, it is the blurring and merging of distinctions that characterize liminality (Turner 1982). Persons who find themselves in a liminal phase, for example when changing roles or developing practices, are temporarily undefined beyond the normative social structure. This weakens them, since they have no rights over others (Turner 1980).

Research on liminality has focused on inherent problems and tensions involved in transition and the challenges of developing and living with multiple identities and competing value systems (Söderlund and Borg 2017). Consequently, liminality is commonly understood as a transitory stage, or a rite of passage between two stable structures that is characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty through which the individual or community passes (Turner 1967). Recently, McCabe and Briody (2016, p. 2) suggest to regard liminality not as a transitory stage with a start and an end, but “as a fluent state, or situation” while constantly moving between different worlds-views.

Liminality as process, position or place

The concept of liminality has received increased attention in management and organization studies and in their systematic literature review Söderlund and Borg (2017) present how liminality has been used in prior research, i.e. as liminality as process, liminality as position or as liminality as place.

Liminality as process refers to a temporary and ambiguous change process, or transitioning, for individuals and organizations, between different states, situations and personal identities. One example of individual liminal processes is development and training programmes (Eriksson-Zetterquist 2002) and one example of collective liminal processes is organizational change periods (Czarniawska and Mazza 2003). Liminality as individual processes “provides a way of focusing on the phase of ‘in-between-ness’ in identity reconstruction as a dialectic process between identities between self and context” (Söderlund and Borg 2017, p. 6) while liminality as collective processes describe “how organizations balance the past and the future when creating a new organizational reality and collective identity” (Söderlund and Borg 2017, p. 7).

Liminality as position focuses on types of work-related positions and roles as profoundly liminal. Individual liminal positions focuses on the liminal facing liminality. Holding liminal positions with liminal professional identities provides the individual with freedom to move between professional communities and to act as negotiator between communities (Borg and Söderlund 2015).

Individuals who temporarily work in an organization to which they have no formal belonging can also hold liminal positions. This position includes, for example consultants (e.g. Garsten 1999, Czarniawska and Mazza 2003, Clegg et al. 2004). Liminal positions offer both positive and negative implications for the liminars (Söderlund and Borg 2017), for example more mobility and freedom from obligations which can trigger innovative thinking and the access and assembly of different disciplinary knowledge but also a weakening of power and exclusion from organizational resources, privileges and information.

Liminality as place emphasizes geographical places, or spaces, created as liminal scenes where different logics meet and create ambiguity. It can be spaces in which power struggles take place at cultural boundary interfaces, such as strategic away-days and workshops (e.g. Räisänen and Löwstedt 2014). At these places, or spaces, creativity and change may be achieved through alignment (Czarniawska and Mazza 2003) or through confrontation of differences (Clegg et al. 2004).

Söderlund and Borg (2017) summarize their review by reflecting on the use of liminality and they conclude that the three themes above (process, position and place) reflect a particular focus of liminality, e.g. temporal liminality, positional liminality and spatial liminality.

Method

The empirical material for this paper was collected in two case studies in the Swedish construction industry. Hence, the empirical examples are located in an institutionalized national industry context. Segerstedt and Olofsson (2010) argue that the construction industry is local and governmental subsidies, national and local regulations as well as the local culture have essentially protected the construction industry from international competition. However, trends such as digitalisation and industrialization are not limited to the local (Swedish) construction industry context why empirical examples and findings are relevant also for contexts outside the local context. In addition, the empirical professional roles in this study are important and extra interesting to explore in order to better understand developments in the industry because “the boundary between construction and the manufacturing industry is indefinite and fuzzy” (Segerstedt and Olofsson 2010, p. 347). Hence, the construction industry can be argued to be in what McCabe and Briody (2016) define as a “fluent state”.

While Case 1 is a single project case study of a construction project during design and production, Case 2 is a multi-project study including several parallel interdependent construction projects in a new urban area during the project development phase. The empirical development process was inductive (Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007) and was focusing on exploring liminal experiences rather than proving any predefined hypotheses. The inductive approach is particularly suitable when exploring a new research direction and aiming at suggesting theory development (Merriam 1988, Dul and Hak 2008).

Case 1: a construction project

The first case study was conducted between 2011 and 2013. The case project is the construction of a large office building with innovative and complex structure and a tight construction site adding pressure on, for example, innovative design and coordination of suppliers and it is initiated by a public client specialized in university buildings.

The project follows a design-bid-build approach, combined with early contractor involvement (ECI). The client contracted an external consultant as partnering manager and an external consultant as BIM coordinator to facilitate collaboration and to support the client, designers, architect and contractor with digital design works. Contracting a partnering manager and a BIM coordinator is a result of a collaborative and innovate project strategy developed by the client.

The study includes observations by partaking in meetings and workshops, document analysis of project specific documents, and 16 semi-structured interviews with project participants. The interviewed are: the client’s project manager, project coordinator and maintenance representative, two design managers, two architects, three designers, the tenant’s project manager, the contractor’s project director, project manger and site manager, the partnering manager and the BIM coordinator.

The interviews were semi-structured and lasted approximately one-two hours each. The researcher performed all the interviews. The interviews were recorded and transcribed and comprises a total of 120 pages of transcribed interviews. The questions were focusing on social interaction, information and communication, i.e. how project work was performed and organized in practice through meetings, roles, responsibilities documents, forums, narratives etc. and perceptions of working in partnering and of using BIM. The analysis is based on finding patterns of behaviour and meaning making among the project participants.

Case 2: an urban development project

The second case study was conducted between 2015 and 2017 (the study is still partly on-going). The case project is an urban development project in Stockholm and the leading actor is the municipality of Stockholm, a large public client of urban development, housing and infrastructure projects. The overall aim of the urban development project is for Stockholm to become a sustainable city with cutting edge sustainable solutions and for the area to be an international showcase for tomorrow’s city planners.

The urban area is being developed in several sequential stages and in each stage there are a multitude of developers, designers, contractors and subcontractors working in parallel and interdependent construction projects within a pre set time plan and a limited spatial area. To handle operational, environmental and spatial complexity, a facilitate coordinated building logistic, a Building Logistic Center (BLC) is initiated and implemented by the municipality to reduce environmental impact, support health and safety and to facilitate efficient building logistics and efficient building operations. BLC is mandatory to assign to all developers, contractors and subcontractors and includes, for example, pre planned and coordinated transports of material and equipment to site and short-term storage. The BLC personnel are specialists in building logistics and work to support developers, contractors and subcontractors in handling efficient building logistics and building operations.

The empirical material includes observations, seminars and workshops, document analysis and 34 semi-structured interviews with project participants. The interviewed are: Representatives from developers, designers, contractors and subcontractors, BLC and municipality representatives (i.e. from the client). The researcher, another senior researcher and two master students performed the interviews. The interviews followed a semi-structured interview, and they were recorded and to some extent transcribed. Each interview lasted one hour in average. The interview questions were focusing on work practices and procurement strategies as well as perceptions of initiating and using BLC. At the time of the study, there were two building logistics specialists working in parallel.

Interpretation process

Literature and empirical material have challenged each other during the interpretation process in what Dubois and Gadde (2002a) would call an “abductive” process. The aim of Case 1 was to study communication an inter-organizational integration in collaborative construction project practice from a client perspective, while the aim of Case 2 was to study procurement practices and strategies from a client perspective in multi-project contexts. The focus on liminal roles and liminal experiences and the negotiation of boundary interfaces emerged during the interpretation process when analysing how change was enacted and experienced.

The interpretation process began with the Case 1 and resulted in tentative findings that were presented at a conference (Karrbom Gustavsson 2015). Later followed Case 2, including an inductive-based search for similar patterns and themes. The whole process was based on thematic content analysis (Bryman 2008). Keywords, phrases and concepts were compared and contrasted and representative extracts were selected to construct the narratives. Inter-organizational challenges, boundary actions and boundary roles were themes that emerged during the analysis of Case 1. Interpretative case studies are recommended when the aim is to understand processes and practices and they are especially appropriate to develop a deeper understanding of how and why processes develop and evolve over time (Langley 1999). The selection of cases was based on expert sampling, in combination with possibilities to gain access to project managers and project participants.

This method has its limitations. It is only two cases, they are different in size and scope, and the empirical focus has only been on public client initiated (procured) consultants enacting professional roles. The purpose of this study, and the two case studies, is not to develop statistical generalizations, but analytical generalizations (Merriam 1988). The new professional roles and their liminal experiences of boundary negotiations are interesting and can be used to advance theory and practice, through the widening of the understanding of the issue at hand.

Findings

Construction projects are performed in flexible, temporary and mobile work settings under multiple constraints, for example time and cost, as well as technical, contextual and organizational complexity that project participants strives to make sense of in work practices, boundary negotiation and by engaging in professional communities of practice. While construction project management handbooks (e.g. Winch 2010), describe standardized stakeholder-based project roles the two cases show that in contemporary project practice characterized by partnering, coordinated building logistics and the implementation of BIM new professional roles can be identified. Three empirical examples of such new professional roles are partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator.

Partnering manager

The client of the office-building project (Case 1) made an early decision to use a collaborative partnering approach. This approach is supported by most project actors and include for example, co-locating client, designers and contractor in a joint project office and developing a joint collaborative agreement to foster a work atmosphere where the “projects’ needs are given first priority” according to the client. .The client describes the partnering manager’s role as “an independent party between the client and the main contractor” who is expected to “coordinate the various strong personalities and to keep them happy”. It is also expected by the client that the partnering manager should “take the pulse on the project” and “leave technology out of the work”.

The contractor, who has previous experience of working in a partnering approach but mainly with internal partnering managers, describes the partnering manager’s role as “the one who should bring up the important questions in terms of collaboration and also the problems with collaboration. The partnering manager has to dare to speak out and make sure we collaborate.” When continuing, the contractor clarifies that

partnering managers have a totally different background than us, they are not builders, they are sort of psychologists, they listen to people, recognize and lift unspoken tensions in the projects … they are humanists and have a social science background and they don’t have to know what we are doing, what we are going to build, they only need to know the targets.

After elaborating on the role further, the partnering manager describe the partnering manager as “not so important”, more like “a peripheral person” that “makes the team grow together”.

There is concern about the collaborative approach among designers. “It is important that the actors that take part are aware of what this means, and don’t work according to old customs and starts criticizing like they traditionally do”. When asked to reflect on the partnering manager, a designer explains: “The partnering manager has an important function when it comes to soft parameters, respect and trust” and continues “the partnering manager is an important link for us to understand each other, contractor and designers”. The actual work of the partnering manager is experienced as “trying to weld together the whole team so we become one team, and not two”.

The architect is a bit sceptic when reflecting on the purpose of the collaborative approach: “Increased profitability is probably the main goal”. According to the architect, the partnering manager is acting “a bit outside the project” and is “just another consultant in a situation when we have lots of new consultants coming in. It is quality, work environment etc”. The architect explains the situation: “The construction industry is becoming more administrative and more complex”. Elaborating further on the collaboration agreement, the architect says: “It is difficult with all these words, like zero errors and such. They are too easy to say and too hard to achieve”.

When reflecting on the own work, the partnering manager describes interviewing new project participants, or “ambassadors” and recommending them to the client’s project manager as a central part of the work. The work also include managing the collaboration process by selecting, presenting and following up on the collaborative agreement by a repetitive collaboration satisfaction survey, and by designing, facilitating and following up on activities such as collaborative workshops and social events such as joint dinner parties.

The partnering manager experience the work as “facilitating and helping the project meeting its goals by working with the soft parameters in the project and to make the team work together” and when elaborating on experiences of liminal work the role is perceived as “not a competitor to the project manager” but “as a complement to the project manager” and “since all others have something else than collaboration on top of their agenda, I am needed. I have collaboration as highest priority in this project”.

Building logistic specialist

The public client initiated a Building Logistic Center (BLC) that is mandatory to use by all developers, contractors and subcontractors in the urban development project (Case 2). According to the client, coordinated building logistics is necessary in order to gain inter-organizational coordination, more efficient processes, less CO2-emissions and increased safety. The client describes the building logistic specialist’s role as “educating and supporting developers and contractors with logistic planning to enable more efficient operations”.

Other project actors, such as developers (i.e. housing developers) and contractors had mixed perceptions of the work of the building logistic specialist; while some developers and contractors viewed the work as contributing to a more efficient project process, others viewed the work as a hinder from doing their work according to common ways of working. One of the contractors describes the experiences of working with BLC as making the work much more complex and administrative:

Before we used to do logistics ourselves, and the handling of material was much, much simpler. Now we have to do much more handling with planning and booking deliveries of material and much more. We have to plan much more in detail.

The contractor also differentiates between those who know about construction and those who don’t:

There were problems with the building logistic personnel and according to me it had to do with a lack of understanding of how the construction process works. They were helpful but the services they offered were not supporting us when building. They didn’t understand the overall idea of how we build.

The contractor continues and elaborates on the situation saying that “the industry is rather conservative and these kind of changes make people irritated. When you don’t get to decide yourself, when someone else decides”. One of the developers also raises the issue of the building logistic specialist interfering with the contractor’s work. “Interfering with the contractors operation process, to say that we know best is not a good way. It will probably be interpreted the wrong way”.

When reflecting on the work the building logistic specialist describes the introduction to BLC and the education of all contractors and subcontractors in building logistics, including the special requirements and routines of using BLC as most important. The role also includes promoting additional services and benefits of using BLC to developers, such as material transports, production and delivery plans, waste management, equipment and machinery. The building logistic specialist experience the work as being “support to the projects” by integrating construction work with the supply chain processes in order to enable smooth operation and a more efficient construction process but acknowledges that it is challenging to gain the contractors and subcontractor’s attention when BLC is a top-down initiative. The building logistic specialists conclude that coordinated building logistics would gain from more informal meetings between building logistic specialists and site managers earlier in the production.

BIM coordinator

In the office building-project (Case 1) 3D-object based modelling, or BIM as they also call it, is intended as support for visualization, calculations, quantity take off, simulations, clash detection etc. in both design and production. The client initiated this by procuring an external consultant as BIM coordinator to help actors in what can be perceived as the new, unfamiliar and challenging terrain: “The BIM coordinator is a guide for us, like a psychologist that we go to talk to”. The idea to work with BIM is perceived by the client as “a rather new way to work with one database instead of working with drawings.” “The model represents the old drawings and it is a work tool to use”. The client continues: “The BIM coordinator is the expert by combining the different models and creating the facts that we need: the clashes”.

The difference between working with drawings and the digital model is also commented by the architect: “Instead of working with dumb drawings, we make them by hand but in a computer, we have created some 3D-volumes … it only end up with a lot of problems for us because we don’t get the drawings that we want” The architect experience that this way of working with 3D-models is slower than traditional ways of working and says that everyone “is probably a frustrated about this”.

The plan is that the BIM coordinator supports the digital design process during both design and early production. However, the work was mainly focusing on combining models in the design phase because during production the contractor used their own information: “We can get information from the model, but we use papers instead”. The contractor also indicates why by saying that “we use 2D drawings today. We have the intention to use 3D to visualize some details but we are not on that level yet”.

In the BIM coordinators own words, the work is comprised of “helping and combining the different actors” by helping them to combine their respective digital model(s) and then guide them through the joint model during design meetings. The BIM coordination work included coordinating the architect and designers’ individual work and integrating their respective design models into one joint 3D-object oriented project model. The work also included checking the models for clash detection, and to upload the joint model on the project web for the other project actors to be able to use it. The BIM coordinator managed interactive design meetings, once per month, for architect and designers to coordinate their work, a work that was experienced as contributing to improving quality and efficiency while supporting the digital design maturity among the actors.

Experiences of liminal work in construction

The partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator practice liminal work and experience tensions in liminal movement. The individual’s experiences of liminal work when negotiating boundary interfaces are different (see Table 1): while some experience liminal work to be important for coordination, integration and to make change happen, others perceive it as a problem causing frustration and irritation. Tensions that are involved in liminal movement arise between design and production, between construction and logistics and between the 2D-drawings and the 3D-models. Hence, tensions arise between, and also within, established communities of practice.

Table 1. Expectations and experiences of liminal roles in liminal work.

	Client’s (initiators) expectations	Architect’s (A); Designer’s (D); Contractor’s (C); Developer’s (DE) experiences	Liminar’s own expectations and experiences
Partnering manager	Independent coordinator that leaves technology out and focus on the social factors	A: Just another consultant adding complexity	Helping facilitator that complements the project manager. The only one focusing only on collaboration
		D: Important integrative function for understanding each other
		C: A peripheral person controlling collaboration
Building logistic specialist	Supporting educator with competences to increase efficiency in construction	C: Problem creator that causes irritation because they don’t know construction	Supporting contractors to improve efficiency. Lacking site manager′s attention and interest
		DE: Interfering with the contractor
BIM coordinator	Supportive expert guide that combine design and production	A: Problem creator making the process slower	Helping and combining the different actors by increasing digital design maturity. Lacking contractor interest
		C: Not working on the contractor′s level

Discussion

The aim is to explore liminal roles in construction project practice by focusing on how individuals view liminal experience and what tensions are involved. Findings are based on what experienced challenges new professionals encounter when negotiating boundary interfaces in construction project practice. Empirics from two cases identified the partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator as new professional roles in contemporary construction project practice. However, for change to happen in construction practice, new roles have to require the ability to negotiate boundary interfaces, both intra and inter-organizationally (Dainty et al. 2006, Fellows and Liu 2012). When new roles negotiate boundary interfaces, they can be understood as triggers for tensions (Räisänen and Löwstedt 2014) that can challenge industry norms (Styhre 2011a). In some situations new roles might also spur desperate attempts to recover old certainties while in others situations new roles create new differences (Horvath et al. 2015).

One example illustrating tensions, or “stakes and struggles”, in boundary negotiations between an established community of practice and a competing community of practice is the contractor’s comment on the building logistic specialist’s lack of understanding:

There were problems with the building logistic personnel and according to me it had to do with a lack of understanding of how the construction process works. They were helpful but the services they offered were not supporting us when building. They didn’t understand the overall idea of how we build.

This extract shows the contractor’s reaction on imposed changes having to adjust traditional ways of working to BLC requirements and it indicates an attempt to recover old certainties (Horvath et al. 2015). The contractor uses the strategy to discredits the building logistic specialists by commenting their lack of knowledge of construction. This is in line with the strategies used by the construction practitioners when attacking management consultants in the study by Räisänen and Löwstedt (2014) and it highlights what others have said about the idealized view of consultants as boundary brokers whose role it is to transform organizational practices (e.g. Garsten 1999, Czarniawska and Mazza 2003). According to Clegg et al. (2004), consultants are mere “parasites” that make a living on making “noise” and “disrupting” the existing order and enabling the creation of new order.

Disruption

Partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator can be understood as professional roles initiated by public clients to act as boundary brokers and change agents towards increased collaboration, efficiency and digital maturity in construction project practice. Acting as change agent, the partnering manager is expected to work as boundary broker and combine client, architect, designers and contractor by facilitating interactive workshops and designing, controlling and following up on collaborative agreement (compare with Eriksson 2010). Following the same line of reasoning, the building logistic specialist is expected to educate and guide builders how to become more efficient in operations and thereby more efficiently combining the construction and supply chain processes (compare with Ekeskär and Rudberg 2016). The BIM coordinator is also expected to educate and guide actors and processes. In focus are the designers and the architect and the purpose is to improve information management to facilitate efficient design and production (compare with Vass and Karrbom Gustavsson 2017).

However, in the fragmented and “loosely coupled” construction industry (Dubois and Gadde 2002b), the partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator do not necessarily “bridge” boundaries by combining actors, processes, places or professions. Instead, the new professional roles also seem to create tensions, distances, and irritation – disruption – when practising liminal work because it challenges established structures, practices, norms and hierarchies. Introducing coordinated building logistic solutions such as BLC, for example, caused irritation and was seen as a threat by the contractor: “… the industry is rather conservative and these kind of changes make people irritated”. The contractor continues by using historic references and rational arguments why change is not wanted or needed: “Before we used to do logistics ourselves, and the handling of material was much, much simpler”. The boundary negotiations created uncertainty about the continuity of institutionalized norms and traditions (Horvath et al. 2015) and there was frustration about having to change “… when someone else decides”.

The contractor’s response on the role of the partnering managers also illustrates tensions by sustaining a distance, in this case by keeping away part of the information and thereby limit any risk for disruption: “Partnering managers … they don′t have to know what we are doing, what we are going to build, they only need to know the targets”. Instead of changing from 2D to 3D, i.e. from drawings to digital models, the contractors neglected to use the joint digital model developed in design. Avoiding disruptions to their traditional ways of working they communicated the intention to change but continued working as usual. “We have the intention to use 3D to visualize some details but we are not on that level yet”.

The new professional roles are seen as creating disruption. The examples above also indicate that the new roles are partly inside and partly outside the project – acting in the organizational periphery (Swan et al. 2016). They are seen as inside the project when they are not making any “noise” (Clegg et al. 2004), for example when using soft parameters in partnering helping the team work together, and they are outside when they challenge situated knowledge in construction, for example when not accepting the traditional ways of working in production (compare with Räisänen and Löwstedt 2014). The new professional roles can thus be understood as “betwixt and between” traditional structures of work facing structural ambiguity (Borg and Söderlund 2015). This is also shown when comparing the client’s view on the partnering manager’s role as “an independent party between the client and the main contractor” to the partnering manger’s own view of the role as “a complement to the project manager”. Here, it is not clear if the partnering manager is inside the project as a competent participant together with the project manager or outside the project as an independent party.

A final example of the new professional roles being attacked by discredit based on lack of situated knowledge and thereby becoming temporally undefined (Turner 1982) is the contractor’s perception of the role of partnering managers: “Partnering managers have a totally different background than us, they are not builders, they are sort of psychologists, they listen to people, recognize and lift unspoken tensions in the projects … they are humanists and have a social science background …”. It can be argued that when defining the partnering manager as some “sort of psychologists” the contractor also discredits the partnering manager as psychologist. The partnering manager becomes undefined, in what McCabe and Briody (2016) would call a “fluent state”.

Practising multi-liminal work in a fluent state

Findings show that when new professional roles such as partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator practise liminal work they negotiate professional, spatial and process boundary interfaces in combination. For example, new professional roles negotiate not only organizational boundaries between actors, but also balance history and future when challenging industry norms (Styhre 2011a) while challenging communities of practice (Horvath et al. 2015). Hence, new professional roles practice what can be understood as multi-liminal work when at the same time combining liminality as process, position and place (Söderlund and Borg 2017). One example of this is when the BIM coordinator supports the designers and architect to work jointly with 3D digital models in interactive design meetings. Not only is the professional role new, technology is also new and the ways of working with a partnering approach, for example in a joint project office, is also new.

Not all boundary negotiations are successful. The BIM coordinator managed to facilitate a joint 3D digital model in the design, but could not make the contractor accept, use and further develop the model. This example seems to be typical for the new roles in the two cases studied. The acceptance and adaptation to change practices seems to be difficult in relation to the contractor and the contractor’s established ways of working. As Styhre (2011b) has noted, and which Räisänen and Löwstedt (2014) confirms, for contractors know-how and expertise are valued tokens of social capital and demonstrated through performing “good work”. However, what is considered to be “good work” has been locally established in the organization at individual level and over time has become embedded in local norms.

The conceptual framework of liminality is helpful for increasing our understanding the unfolding of construction project practice and challenges and opportunities associated with client initiated change initiatives. It is also of value for taking the individual project worker’s working situation as a boundary negotiator and liminal worker seriously. Previous studies (e.g. Borg and Söderlund 2015) focuse on the temporary worker, often working in-between or as Turner (1982, p. 27) puts it, being “betwixed and between” communities of practice. For the individual project worker taking on the multi-liminal role as, for example, partnering manager, building logistic specialist or BIM coordinator, liminal work includes combining liminality as process, position and place in a situation characterized of ambiguity and uncertainty (Beech 2011). Applying a contingency perspective, liminal work means constantly acting in a “fluent state” (McCabe and Briody 2016), because industries always have to adapt to changes in the environment (Lawrence and Lorsch 1976). This adaption has no beginning and no end but is a dynamic process. On an individual level, working in “fluent state” pose risk on temporal project workers perceiving project overload (Zika-Viktorsson et al. 2006, Karrbom Gustavsson 2015), when being in “limbo” (Turner 1982, p. 24) practising multi-liminal work. However, on an organizational level multi-liminal work also pose opportunities for construction project practice to evolve based on transdisciplinarity (Nicolescu 2002) and for applying more holistic approaches when identifying and handling complex challenges within the built environment such as environmental, social and economical sustainability. Hence, there is a need for future studies of the development, practices, experiences and effects of multi-liminal roles for construction industry change.

Conclusions

Practices, structures and roles develop and change over time. This development take place through dynamic negotiating of boundary interfaces when practising liminal work. The public client in Case 1 had ambitions on collaboration and innovation and procured a partnering manager and a BIM coordinator. The boundary negotiations took place along a multitude of boundary interfaces, albeit most of them related to the specific construction project. From a learning perspective, this can be seen as a limitation since changes in single projects do not easily spread to other projects.

The public client in Case 2 had ambitions to make the urban development project a state-of-the-art example on sustainable urban development and initiated coordinated building logistic which was mandatory to use for all developers, contractors and subcontractors. Here, boundary negotiations took place along a multitude of boundary interfaces, most of them with different construction projects and their respective actors. From an implementation perspective this is more challenging because of the vast number of actors and boundary interfaces, but from a learning perspective the change initiative in Case 2 has greater possibility spreading and thereby contributing to long-term and wide spread change.

The theoretical contribution relates to the concept of liminality, and to the initial division of liminality as process, position or space as outlined by Söderlund and Borg (2017). This study shows that new professional roles in construction project practice, such as partnering manager, building logistic specialist and BIM coordinator practice, all three dimensions of liminality in combination at the same time. Consequently, new professional roles in client initiated change projects practice multi-liminal work and should be understood as multi-liminal roles. From a contingency perspective, practising multi-liminal work is understood as working in a constant “fluent state” (McCabe and Briody 2016).

From a practical perspective, this study shows the importance of acknowledging that project practice continuously develops through “stakes and struggles” (Räisänen and Löwstedt 2014) in day-to-day mundane construction project practice (Boudeau 2013) and that there is no final “end state” when professional roles are fixed or finally defined. This will, for example, provide support when clients procure consultants and this study can be understood as a contribution within an emergent field of research that focuses on social practice and the development of new professional roles (compare with Gluch 2009).

The findings show that individuals engaged in liminal work experience liminal roles differently (see Table 1). While most of the respondents are positive and engaging, some are reluctant and even offensive. Findings also show that tensions are involved between, and also within, established communities of practice when combining actors, phases and professions. The development of new professional roles in dynamic practices is challenging in many ways and despite its limitations this study emphasizes the need for further research that studies the unfolding of construction project practice. In particular, this is important to study construction project work as continuous change and not only as change that takes place between “before and after”. Also, it is important to study the need is for education, support and competence development in dynamic practices.

Even though public clients have power and potential to initiate change through procurement, change is not easily accomplished in practice. This study, while not claiming to have identified all new professional roles that can be identified as liminal in contemporary construction project practice, shows how liminal work is experienced and how individuals in new professional roles struggle and, as it seems, sometimes fail to make desired change to happen.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.