The digitalization journey
Four digital maturity levels, one scale.
Every diagnostic places clients at a maturity level. The four levels are Analogish, Pre-BIM, BIM Ready and BIM Engaged — BIM being Building Information Modelling, the information discipline set out in ISO 19650. Placement is measured across five business dimensions through the Grounded Diagnostic. Evidence-based and business-driven.
Underneath the five business dimensions sit 43 segments — the permanent yardstick every score traces back to. Segments are what move, or fail to. If you stick with us, it is what we help you advance in Clarity Compass.
Analogish
Pre-awareness · No formal BIM
Paper, PDF, and email-driven workflows. Information lives in silos and decisions rest on memory and personal relationships. The cost of staying here is real but hidden — rework on every project, asset registers rebuilt from scratch, renewal decisions made on the best memory rather than the best evidence.
- Drawing and spec revisions tracked in email chains and shared drives.
- Cost, schedule, and risk reported in spreadsheets that cannot be reconciled.
- Operations receive paper O&M manuals; the asset register is rebuilt from scratch.
Pre-BIM
Awareness & Desire · Pilot BIM
The organization has committed but not yet earned the standing of a BIM Ready operator. The most common failure is moving too fast into tooling before people, processes, and procurement language are aligned. Pre-BIM exercises build the awareness, desire, and confidence sustained change rests on — the clearest demonstration of People Before Pixels.
- A digital strategy exists but hasn't shaped procurement or competencies.
- Leadership has committed; mid-level operators aren't yet convinced.
- Pilots are isolated; lessons are documented but not embedded.
BIM Ready
Knowledge & Ability · CDE in routine use
The organization runs its capital and operating programs on BIM under ISO 19650. The supply chain knows the expectations and meets them; data flows from design into operations without rebuilding the asset register. This is the maturity target for most Canadian public-sector owners over the next five years.
- EIRs issued on every major project and audited at gateway reviews.
- A Common Data Environment in routine use; supply-chain compliance measured.
- Structured asset information accepted into the register without rework.
BIM Engaged
Reinforcement · Digital Twin & AI live
The most advanced level. ISO 19650 is routine, and the organization now uses digital practice to ask better questions about its own performance — and act on the answers faster than its peers.
- Operating Digital Twins inform energy, condition, and renewal in near real time.
- AI-assisted analytics flag deviation before it shows up in reports.
- Data standards published; peers hosted as observers of the operating model.
The placement grid — a worked example
Placement is per business dimension
An organization is rarely the same across the five business dimensions. This client is BIM Ready on Contracts yet still crossing from analog on Process — so the plan sequences each dimension on its own track, and the client strategy aligns only to the business areas where evidence shows a need and benefit.
| Business dimension | L1 ANALOGISH | L2 PRE-BIM | L3 BIM READY | L4 BIM ENGAGED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| People | ||||
| Process | ||||
| Technology | ||||
| Governance | ||||
| Contracts |
Segment counts by business dimension: People 8, Process 9, Technology 9, Governance 9, Contracts 8 — 43 in total.
Graduation criteria
Every level closes against a gate, and the gate is written down
Levels two and three are gated. A business dimension cannot be placed at Pre-BIM or BIM Ready until the gate language for that transition is evidenced by a real document or a real practice, cited. There are 27 criteria in total, set out across the five business dimensions and the transitions between levels, and a gate crossing needs every criterion under that transition independently confirmed. Partial does not count, and one confident answer in one interview is not a gate.
Your final placement is the lowest of three calculations: what the evidence implies, what the gate allows, and how much of the dimension we were able to cover. The lowest wins.
A worked example, from one of our own anonymised diagnostics
The client scored 79% met on Contracts, with an evidence average of 3.1 — and was still placed at Analogish, because the BIM execution plan and the digital-delivery procurement clause were never evidenced, so the first gate stayed closed. Seventy-nine percent reads, to an untrained eye, like an organization most of the way there. The gate is what stops that number being reported as anything more than a floor.
Clarity Builders' own delivery record, anonymised.
The renewal expectation, set early
When your placement moves
A maturity level changes only at a Grounded Diagnostic, because the score is grounded in a completed project and re-scoring the same project proves nothing.
Between diagnostics, Clarity Compass reports movement at segment level, with evidence — as evidence in place, never as a placement change. When a newly completed, relevant project exists that can measure your advancement honestly, the diagnostic re-runs on a new baseline.
We say this at the beginning rather than at renewal, because a client who expects a new level in month twelve is a client we have set up to be disappointed.