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The Energy Was Different on Day 2
You know that feeling when you walk into a conference and something just clicks? Day 2 at DBIA DESIGN-BUILD 2025 had that energy.
As exhibitors at booth 431, we watched the conversation shift from theory to reality. Thursday, November 6, brought the practitioners. The people actually building mega projects, managing distributed teams, and figuring out how to make Progressive Design-Build work in the real world.
What we learned surprised us. And we’ve been in this industry for years.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
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Schedule a MeetingProgressive Design-Build Isn’t Optional Anymore
The morning general session made one thing clear: Progressive Design-Build is taking over large, complex projects and nuclear facilities. Major infrastructure. Healthcare campuses that cost hundreds of millions.
Traditional design-bid-build can’t handle this level of complexity. You can’t design everything before you build something that’s never been built before. You need teams collaborating from day one. You need contracts that expect change instead of penalizing it.
Progressive Design-Build only works if your technology supports it.
You’re bringing in trade partners early. Design is evolving weekly. Site conditions change. Everyone needs access to current information, not what was true last month.
Where 360° Reality Capture Becomes Essential
This is where 360° reality capture stops being critical infrastructure for your project.
We demoed this at our booth all day. Lens360 by iFieldSmart captures site conditions as they actually exist. Not as your drawings show them. As they are.
For Progressive Design-Build, this transforms everything. When the scope changes and budgets shift based on actual conditions, you need tangible proof. You need documentation accessible to everyone. You need to be able to generate binder reports that clearly show exactly what you’re working with.
VDC Leadership Is About People, Not Just Technology
What VDC Solutions Really Need to Do
The VDC solutions need to support three things:
Better decisions. When you coordinate negotiations on a tight schedule, you need to see conflicts before the steel is ordered. You need 3D models that show what you are actually building, not just what the architect drew.
Faster coordination. Your weekly BIM coordination meetings shouldn’t take four hours. When everyone can see the model, markup issues, and track resolutions in one place, meetings get shorter and more productive.
Real collaboration. Not the fake kind where everyone nods in meetings, then does their own thing. The kind where trade partners actually work together because the tools make it easier to collaborate than to work in silos.
Data Integration That Actually Works
Here’s what we heard the most on Day 2: “The tools don’t talk to each other.”
Got the reality capture in one system. BIM models in Autodesk. Daily reports in Procore. Project financials are somewhere else. Everyone’s working from different versions of the truth.
The VDC Innovation Talks drove this home. Autodesk talked about collaboration as a mindset. Procore showed how BIM drives the built environment. Leap Thought presented their one model approach.
Why Integration Matters for Real Projects
Let’s take an example. A superintendent walks the site in the morning. He notices a conflict between the mechanical and the structure. In the old world, he takes a photo, writes an RFI, emails it around, and hopes someone updates the model eventually.
With proper integration, he creates an observation tied to a specific location in the 3D model. It automatically notifies the right people. The MEP coordinator sees it in their coordination software. The general contractor tracks it in their project management system. Nobody has to manually transfer information or chase people down.
That’s what integration actually means. Real-time savings on real problems.
We built data integration between Lens 360, iFieldSmart Technologies, Procore, and Autodesk Construction Cloud because teams used to lose time on data entry instead of building things.
AI That Helps Instead of Hypes
Everyone’s talking about AI. Some of it’s real. Most of it’s marketing.
What’s actually working on jobsites right now?
- BIM takeoff with AI that reviews the model and spots scope before it becomes change orders. A smart tool that catches what humans miss when reviewing thousands of elements.
- Chatbots that pull information from your submittals and specs so you’re not searching through folders at midnight before the owner meeting. The project documentation becomes searchable and useful.
- Scope gap analysis that compares what you planned to build against what’s actually getting installed. Catches discrepancies early when they’re cheap to fix instead of expensive to repair.
Remote Teams Need Better Tools
The session on high-performance virtual design and construction teams caught the audience’s attention. One statistic that stood out was that projects with distributed teams spend 40% more time in meetings but report 30% less clarity in decisions.
More meetings. Less clarity. That’s not a people problem. That’s a tool problem.
Progress Tracking That Shows Truth
What kills remote collaboration? Working from different versions of reality.
The progress tracking needs to show what’s actually installed, not what the schedule says should be done. When everyone, from the owner to the trade partners, can see the same dashboard showing real progress, conversations change.
We are showcasing this at our booth using model-based tracking. You see what’s built versus what’s planned. You can track by trade, catch delays when they’re days old, not weeks old.
This helps to progress meetings, dropping from two hours to 45 minutes using visual progress tracking. Same accuracy. Half the time. That’s the efficiency that makes the difference between profit and loss.
Observations That Don’t Get Forgotten
Here’s a problem that everyone has: someone notices a problem locally, makes a note and it goes unnoticed until it becomes a serious problem.
Sound familiar?
Our observation creation and reporting tools solve this in a simple way. You create the observation on site using your phone. It ties to a location in your 3D model. It is assigned automatically to the right trade or team member. Everyone can track it through resolution.
This matters more on large projects where hundreds of people are working across multiple shifts. The morning crew notices something. The afternoon crew needs to know about it. With integrated observations, they do.
Constructability Review Before It’s Too Late
The Clackamas County Courthouse session talked about Oregon’s first P3 delivery. One takeaway: early constructability review saved the millions.
Constructability review used to mean a senior superintendent looking at drawings and hoping they caught issues. Now it means overlaying your BIM models with reality capture to spot conflicts before you order materials.
Can that beam actually fit through that opening? Is there clearance for installation? Does the sequence make sense given site access?
Answer these questions during design, and they’re easy fixes. Answer them during installation, and they’re expensive problems.
We integrate constructability review into our VDC workflow because catching issues early is the whole point of design-build collaboration.
Closeout Documentation
Completing the final 10% can feel like it takes half your emotional strength. Chasing submittals. Creating punchlist items. Making sure every document is where the owner expects it.
Our closeout solutions handle this without the chaos. Document management that’s actually organized. QR codes that let you access equipment information from anywhere on site. Punchlist tools that integrate.
Closeout shouldn’t be a scramble. It should be the natural result of good documentation throughout the project.
Comparison Table
| What You Need | Old Way | Integrated Way |
|---|---|---|
| Submittals | Email chains, lost files | Automated tracking, QR access |
| Punchlist | Separate spreadsheets | Model-tied observations |
| Owner Handoff | Boxes of paper | Digital binder reports |
| Time Required | Weeks or months | Days or weeks |
The AR/VR Experience Nobody Expected
We added something new to our booth this year: iFieldSmart in Meta Oculus for immersive walkthroughs.
You can put on the headset and step inside the project. Review the model in 3D space. Spot coordination issues that aren’t obvious on a screen. And show owners what they’re getting before you build it.
The response surprised us. People expect VR to be gimmicky. But when you use it for actual coordination and stakeholder engagement, it changes conversations.
That’s design excellence meeting technology. That’s the kind of innovation Day 2 was all about.
What Day 2 Taught Us About Where This Industry’s Going
Walking the floor. Talking to hundreds of people. Watching the sessions. A pattern emerged.
The projects that work share something in common: they treat their digital tools as project infrastructure, not optional add-ons.
VDC isn’t a department. It’s how you deliver projects.
Data integration isn’t a tech problem. It’s a business strategy.
AI isn’t magic. It’s automation that frees your team to focus on judgment calls instead of busywork.
Progressive Design-Build needs technology that supports collaboration, not hinders it.
Come See It in Action
Look, reading about this stuff is one thing. Seeing it work on your project’s challenges is different.
We’re at booth 431 through the end of DBIA DESIGN-BUILD 2025. Bring your hardest problem. Show us what’s keeping you up at night. Let us show you how integrated VDC solutions might help.
Whether you’re managing a mega project or a complex renovation, whether you’re an owner transforming delivery or a contractor trying to stay competitive, the conversation’s worth having.
Day 2 proved something important: the future of design-build isn’t about isolated tools. It’s about integration that creates clarity. It’s about VDC that supports leadership. It’s about giving teams what they need to deliver without the chaos.
Ready to see how it works? Visit us at booth 431, or check out what we’re showcasing at ifieldsmart.com/lens360/events/design-build-2025.
The sessions are great. The real innovation happens when it connects the dots between what’s possible and what you’re building.
What’s your biggest challenge with VDC or Progressive Design-Build? Visit booth 431 and let’s figure it out together.
