Jacob Drachmann is Chief Commercial Officer at CN3. He has seen digital transformation in construction unfold up close, from the early BIM experiments to today’s AI hype cycle, and spends his days helping large infrastructure projects make sense of their own data. His conclusion is blunt: most of the industry has only digitised the surface.
The illusion of control
“We’ve come far with BIM. But in practice, it’s still mainly used to produce drawings. The real potential, using data as the foundation for decisions, is still ahead of us.”
For Jacob, the biggest challenge in large projects today is fragmentation. Data is all over the place. Models get exported, shared through email or a CDE, and the moment someone opens the file, it is already outdated.
Teams still rely heavily on manual exports and retyping.
“It’s basically the digital version of passing around a USB stick. The moment you take data offline, it stops being reliable.”
That lack of consistency creates risk.
“People often don’t know if what they’re looking at is the latest version, or if someone else has updated the data yesterday. Decisions get made on shaky ground, and that’s where misunderstandings and conflicts begin.”
From models to data rooms
CN3 is advocating a shift from model-based thinking to data-based thinking.
“We call it the data room. It’s the place where you know you’re looking at live information, quantities, properties, costs, emissions, all synchronised.”
He doesn’t believe in a single platform to solve everything.
“It’s about connecting the right ones. The model, the schedule, the cost system, the sustainability data, they all need to talk to each other. The idea is that everyone works from the same source of truth but sees it through their own lens.”
For executives, that might mean dashboards and key metrics. For engineers, detailed quantities and models.
“It’s the same data. Just presented differently depending on your role.”
AI will only help if the data is reliable
Like many in the industry, Jacob sees the potential of artificial intelligence, but he is careful not to oversell it.
“AI will definitely help us automate document reading, submittal reviews, quality checks, all those time-consuming tasks. But if the data isn’t reliable, AI just produces faster nonsense.”
He sees the real promise of AI not in replacing people, but in connecting patterns across projects.
“Every project is unique, but the mistakes are the same. AI can help us learn from that, find where delays happen, where handovers fail, and where we lose time or knowledge.”
Working across cultures and contracts
Jacob has worked on projects across several countries and sees how culture and regulation shape digital adoption.
“There are big differences. Each country has its own legislation and standards, and that drives how teams work. But even within one country, every project becomes its own micro-culture. New consultants, new contractors, new client, you’re basically rolling the dice each time.”
Still, he believes progress is visible.
“BIM has created a more common language across the Nordics. It’s easier to find common ground now. But at the end of the day, culture still decides whether people share data or protect it in silos.”
The idea of a control room
When asked what his ideal setup would look like, Jacob doesn’t hesitate: a digital control room.
He imagines a shared environment where everyone, from executive management to site engineers, can see what matters most to their work.
“Top management should be able to see costs, risks, and progress. The project manager should see live quantities. The engineer should see the model. But they should all be looking at the same, reliable data.”
For him, this kind of transparency would change more than processes.
“It would change behaviour. We’d have more evidence-based discussions, fewer arguments, and fewer surprises. Most conflicts come from missing or unclear information.”
Killing bad habits
When asked what he would most like to get rid of, Jacob laughs.
“Not a tool, a practice. I’d kill the habit of dumping and retyping data. That’s the real problem.”
He mentions a large contractor who found out that the same quantity was typed manually thirteen times between tender and site kickoff.
“The tools aren’t the problem, the lack of connectivity is. As long as systems don’t talk to each other, we’ll keep wasting time.”
Beyond BIM
Jacob also believes the industry should rethink its language.
“Maybe we should stop talking about BIM as the goal. What we really need is an information model, a digital twin that combines everything: drawings, models, quantities, and live data. BIM is part of it, but not the whole picture.”
“BIM has become a word that means too many different things. If we focus on information instead, we’ll get closer to the real objective, building from one coherent source of truth.”
Measuring flow
Before wrapping up, Jacob introduces a new metric he would like to see adopted: the Flow Factor.
“On-site, we already measure safety and CO₂, but we should also measure whether the project is actually progressing. When coordination breaks down and teams start reworking tasks, everyone feels it. A high flow factor means the project is well coordinated. A negative one means something’s stuck.”
After more than a decade working at the intersection of construction and technology, his message is refreshingly grounded.
“You can’t make good decisions on bad data. If we can fix that, everything else, AI, automation, digital twins, will fall into place.”
This article originally appeared in ONSIGHT Magazine Issue #01 2026, the magazine for digital transformation in the construction industry, published by Vitus. Download the full magazine for free. More from ONSIGHT: Some Bridges You Have to Build Twice and Data Doesn’t Care About Your Gut Feeling.
