The designing phase represents a small part of the total costs of the construction of a building but it can have significant long-term impact on the overall operating and life-cycle costs. Unfortunately, the established multistage tendering and traditional construction planning processes have led to the separation between the different fields of planning and design. The design teams are brought together fairly late in the process, which does not encourage multidisciplinary R&D and innovation.

In a traditional construction projects designers and engineers are optimizing their own part of the project which often results in de-optimizing the whole. This lack of interaction between the fields often lead to problems such as unclear responsibility areas, error estimates, expensive design solutions and lost information.

The integrated planning approach offers a solution to these aforementioned problems. It is an innovative approach to planning that enables assessing the lifecycle of the building, cutting costs and improving productivity. In the integrated planning process, multidisciplinary teams work together from the beginning to the end of the project. The main goal is to create a team effort by integrating owners, architects, engineer, managers and users into the process in order to optimize efficiency and create innovative solutions.

In the integrated design process, Building Information Modelling (BIM) serves as the main tool and platform for collaboration. BIM allows the design team to create visualization of the project and insert all essential information about the facility. With the use of BIM, the design team is able to effectively measure the lifecycle of the materials and solutions as well as collaborate efficiently.