Globalization of practice, particularly as it relates to changes in the labor pool, work, and practice, has the capability to significantly change the discipline. The outsourcing of design and drawing work overseas; the robotic producing of building elements and materials; and the use of complex 3-dimensional PC programs to design buildings raise issues and challenge current modes of project delivery.

Trends in computer-aided building design and producing figure prominently in any debate of project delivery techniques. Norman Foster's Swiss Re HQ in London a major current trend in PC programs for building design and paperwork, as an example, is the move towards Building Information Modeling. The primary purpose of PC drawing systems was to automate 2-Dimensional drafting. It probably did so through the introduction of 3-D building elements with an assemblage of 2-Dimensional symbols such as lines.

Nevertheless Building Info Modeling (BIM) is an object-oriented CAD system, in which two-dimensional symbols that stood for building elements are replaced by 3-Dimensional objects with inserted information, able of representing elements of construction. This allows for multiple perspectives to be generated, for multiple building systems to be coordinated, for materials and quantities to be known and referenced to one another, throughout the design and paperwork phases of a project. These qualities make allowances for a degree of interconnectedness during design and paperwork phases not quickly viable in 2-Dimensional CAD systems.

Industry commentators envision that BIM will radically change not just the delivery of design and documents, but also the connection between design team members, owners, and construction entities and the link between design and construction activities. However changes in the way that design groups conceive, develop, and communicate info about buildings are positioned to have a major effect on the practice of architecture.