Part 8 of the series: “Mastering Project Information Management — The ISO 19650 Way”
Why ISO 19650 Fails to Stick Even in the Best Firms
ISO 19650 team adoption is one of the biggest challenges firms face when trying to align with information management best practices. It’s not the standard itself that creates resistance it’s how we roll it out to our teams. And unless adoption is handled carefully, even the best firms struggle to make it stick.
Most rollouts happen like this:
- A workshop or training session is organised.
- BIM managers explain naming conventions, WIP/Shared/Published workflows, and the role of CDEs.
- Everyone nods. Then… they go back to business as usual.
Why? Because ISO 19650 is usually taught as documentation, not experienced as a habit. And unless those principles are made part of daily behaviour, they remain abstract.
Your Team Might Not Need Training Just Clarity
If you’re part of the AEC industry, you’re already used to structured communication even if it’s informal. You label your files, wait for approvals, archive old versions, and try to work with up-to-date data. You’re halfway there.
This is why I say that ISO 19650 team adoption doesn’t necessarily need formal training. It needs better structure that integrates with existing habits.
ISO 19650 doesn’t demand memorising jargon. It just needs consistency.
What Your Team Actually Needs to Understand
To get ISO 19650 team adoption right, you don’t need a BIM coordinator on every small project. You just need your team to understand a few essential ideas:
- Information stages protect you.
Files under development (WIP) must never be used for execution. - Naming matters.
A good name is better than ten explanations. - Approvals are records, not rituals.
If it’s approved, it should be logged, not assumed. - A Common Data Environment isn’t just storage.
It’s a place where structure and trust are built.
Once these points are absorbed into day-to-day activity, you’ve already won half the battle of ISO 19650 team adoption.
The Secret: Onboarding Without Training
When I began building Arkchat, I kept asking myself how can we make ISO 19650 team adoption happen organically, without a workshop, without documentation, without needing to tell people they’re following a standard?
Here’s what we focused on:
1. Translate ISO terms into common language
Instead of WIP → Shared → Published → Archived, we show:
- Draft
- Shared with team
- Approved
- Archived
Teams don’t need to learn terminology. They need to feel at home with the language of work. That alone improves ISO 19650 team adoption dramatically.
2. Make the structure invisible
In Arkchat, version control, file stages, and threaded discussions all happen in the background. Users don’t need to learn a system they just use it.
Every file has a dedicated chat thread. The version history builds automatically. Approvals are trackable with a click.
That’s ISO 19650 team adoption by design, not by training.
3. Approvals inside conversations
Let’s say a team member shares a drawing and says, “Need to sign off on this.”
On most platforms, you then have to create a separate approval task or chase someone on email.
On Arkchat, that very message becomes an approval request. Status, timestamps, response all captured inside the conversation.
That structure was made invisible. That’s how ISO 19650 team adoption becomes natural.
4. Automatic audit trails
One of the pain points in ISO 19650 is compliance tracking. But why chase logs if the system can auto log?
Arkchat keeps every version, every comment, and every decision linked to the file. It’s searchable, shareable, and never lost.
That’s not just useful, it’s what unlocks ISO 19650 team adoption for lean teams.
Trust Through Simplicity
The more intuitive your workflows, the more trust they generate.
Clients trust teams who don’t lose files. Colleagues trust each other when the source of truth is clear. Leadership trusts the process when audits are painless.
When you don’t have to enforce compliance but it still happens you’ve achieved the holy grail of ISO 19650 team adoption.
The Future of ISO 19650: Easy, Not Intimidating
The AEC industry is rapidly digitising. Projects are more global, timelines more compressed, and expectations more structured.
But the people doing the work designers, contractors, consultants still want speed, clarity, and ease.
ISO 19650 team adoption doesn’t require technical perfection. It requires:
- Familiar interfaces
- Embedded structure
- Zero-friction workflows
That’s what we’re trying to solve at Arkchat not with complexity, but with communication.
Final Thoughts: Let the System Teach Itself
To anyone still struggling with ISO 19650 team adoption, I say: stop focusing on training. Focus on design. Build tools that do the explaining for you. Tools that make the structure feel like second nature.
Because when workflows mirror how people already work but with more clarity adoption isn’t a hurdle. It’s an outcome.
And that’s exactly what Arkchat aims to enable.
