Paper short abstract:

Application and use of digital technologies underpin boundary work and expertise in knowledge-based work in architecture and engineering. This paper shows that multiple forms of expertise co-exist with or emerge from digital technologies depending on different conditions.

Paper long abstract:

As knowledge-based work, architecture and civil engineering have been slowly adopting digital technologies into work processes and routines. Application and use of digital technologies have continuously been associated with knowledge production and forms of boundary work underpinning different expertise in this sector (see Cardoso Llach, 2015; Loukissas, 2012). Recently, computational methods such as coding, algorithms, and machine learning have further transformed expertise (Boeva & Kropp, 2024). While many accounts of the sector’s digital transformation suggest a uniform depiction of how digital technology and expertise relate, the actuality is somewhat nuanced. As early social studies on expert systems development and questions of skill and expertise (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986, 2005; Forsythe, 1993) have emphasized, expertise also entails situational response and experience. This paper argues that expertise in this domain is continuously and individually (re-)constructed through internal and external boundary work in the practices and relations with digital technologies and other ‘experts,’ sometimes represented through digital technologies. Drawing upon an ethnography and interview-based study on conditions for implementing computational methods to design for climate neutrality, the paper presents a situated perspective on expertise in this knowledge-based domain. It shows that multiple forms of expertise and knowledge practices co-exist with or emerge from digital technologies depending on actors’ education, background, experience, work projects, and organizational structures. However, given the codification of design and construction knowledge through generative AIs pursued by software companies and start-ups (Boeva et al., 2023), this varied and situational expertise may become diminished for the sake of calculative rationality.