Connective work: the ongoing labour that makes innovation possible in project organising

This paper advances a relational, processual understanding of construction innovation by theorising “connective work” as a socio-technical accomplishment through which digital project delivery emerges. Drawing on practice-based studies of innovation and inspired by Kolb’s connectivity metaphors, we use the term “connective work” to describe the intermittent efforts through which human and non-human actors activate, adjust, and stabilise relations across organisational and temporal boundaries. Empirically, we draw on qualitative case studies of two pioneering Swedish construction projects transitioning from drawing-based to model-based delivery across both design and construction phases. Based on 23 in-depth narrative interviews and two focus groups with project stakeholders, we trace five transformation patterns through which digital innovation unfolded across domains of project organising. Rather than following a linear implementation trajectory or a top-down digital strategy, model-based delivery developed incrementally through acts of connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting among people, tools, routines, and project histories. The study contributes by showing how innovation in fragmented project settings is enacted through connective work, transforming latent connectivity into operative socio-technical relations that enable digital practices to emerge and stabilise over time.