From BIM to process management
For years the debate on the digitalisation of construction has revolved around BIM. Models, interoperability, information levels, coordination: a precise and circumscribed technical universe. The new rule broadens the perspective. The focus is no longer on the information model as such, but on the set of processes that allow data to be generated, used and governed throughout the entire life cycle of a project.
BIM does not disappear – it becomes part of a larger system, where the value lies not only in the models, but in the ability to manage information coherently. And it is in this expanded scenario that artificial intelligence appears.
The perspective missing from the debate
Over the past two years, the conversation about AI in architecture has been dominated by images: conceptual renderings, visualizations, formal experiments. It’s understandable: they are visible, immediate results, easy to share.
But the applications that are most concretely changing the daily work of firms are others: querying documentary archives, searching regulations and specifications, classifying documents automatically, verifying the coherence of information, supporting the drafting of reports, organizing the knowledge accumulated over the years. (>> we also talked about it in the previous issue).
Less spectacular activities, much closer to what you do every day. UNI 11337-8 looks exactly in this direction.
Before being technological, it is an organizational question
There is a point that the rule highlights without saying it explicitly, but which emerges clearly: AI works well when it finds structured, updated and verifiable information. It produces fragile – or unusable – results when data is scattered across messy folders, emails, haphazard PDFs, and hard-to-trace documents.
This poses a real question to any studio, regardless of size: How is the information produced every day managed? It’s not a software issue. It is a question of procedures, responsibilities, validation criteria, archiving methods. A theme that many associate with large organizations, but which also concerns a three-person studio working on five projects simultaneously.
Beyond the hype
The fact that AI appears in UNI 11337-8 is neither a consecration nor an obligation. It’s a sign: the industry is starting to treat these technologies as a stable component of the digital ecosystem, not as a novelty to be observed from afar.
As architects, this might mean stopping wondering which AI tool to use and starting asking something more uncomfortable: Is the firm’s information structure ready to work with these tools?
The rule seems to suggest that the future of digitalization will not only depend on the quality of the algorithms, but on the ability of the studios to build reliable and governable information systems. It is probably there that the most important part of the evolution of the profession will be played out in the coming years.
The weekly column “Architectural Prompting” is edited by experts Luciana Mastrolia, Giovanna Panucci and Andrea Tinazzo
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