Response to Jim Bedrick and Tony Rinella's AIA Report on Integrated Practice: Technology, Process, Improvement, and Cultural Change, and David Jordani's "BIM: A Healthy Disruption to a Fragmented and Broken Process"

Bedrick and Rinella's report on Integrated Practice highlights a key transformation within architectural curricula through the use of BIM software. According to the authors, "We continually hear and read that 'it's not about the technology, it's about the process.' Actually, it's about the results--in this case, the buildings. Neither a technology nor a process is worth the pixels it lights up unless it helps us design and/or build more effectively--to put it bluntly: better, faster, and/or cheaper." (3)

BIM is not intended to replace the design process--rather, it is a tool that has the ability to be utilized throughout the design process in a way that other mediums cannot. If the architectural model has truly shifted from a process-oriented endeavor to a result-driven one, then BIM is uniquely capable of bridging together the earliest design ideas and the completed building.