User Maturity and Benefits Achieved Through the Use of SMART Board Collaboration Technology in Collaboration Sessions

We surveyed four different groups currently using SMART Board collaboration technology during group collaboration sessions for industry and academic purposes. One of the groups consisted of a major European design firm. The second surveyed group consisted of two different construction general contractors. The third group consisted of a group of students taking a BIM course at Stanford University. Additionally, we carried out an evaluation of the economic impact resulting from the implementation of the technology of one of the GCs. We found differences between the levels of benefits perceived by different user groups as well as within the user groups themselves. The study found that all groups reported a consistently high level of a range of benefits from technology use. The study also found that an increase in user maturity, namely user understanding and use of the collaboration technology, has significant positive impact in the level of benefits perceived from the adoption of collaboration technology. An economic impact analysis suggests that there is a very fast payback for an investment in collaboration technology and professional development after making conservative assumptions about impact of an investment on business revenues and expenses.

Acknowledgements: We appreciate the intellectual and financial sponsorship of CIFE member SMART Technologies and the participation in reporting data of DPR, HGB, Turner and students in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Stanford University.