Check Back for Updates!
Tuesday, May 19
8:00 – 9:00 AM
Registration & Breakfast
9:20 – 10:00 AM
Fireside Chat – Modernizing Federal Project Delivery: From Fragmentation to Data-Driven Execution
Federal capital programs are under growing pressure to deliver projects faster, more efficiently, and with greater accountability—yet project delivery across the federal enterprise remains highly fragmented. Disconnected data systems, inconsistent standards, and siloed processes across agencies, contractors, and jurisdictions continue to drive cost overruns, schedule delays, and limited insight into real performance.
Blake Shiver
Vice President and General Manager, Public Sector
Procore Technologies
10:00 – 10:15 AM
Break
10:15 – 11:15 AM
Innovative Housing Design in the Military Panel
This panel will explore emerging approaches to military housing design that address readiness, resilience, and the evolving needs of service members and their families. Panelists will examine how innovation in design, construction, and delivery—ranging from modular and adaptive housing to sustainability, technology integration, and community-centered planning—can improve quality of life while supporting mission effectiveness.
Drawing on perspectives from military leaders, architects, developers, and policymakers, the discussion will highlight successful case studies, lessons learned, and opportunities to modernize aging infrastructure. The panel will also consider how thoughtful housing design can enhance workforce retention, support family stability, and respond to changing demographics, climate challenges, and budget constraints.
Attendees will gain insight into how innovative housing solutions can balance affordability, durability, and flexibility, and how cross-sector collaboration can accelerate the adoption of best practices across installations and services.
11:15 – 11:30 AM
Networking Break
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Digital Technology Backbone – Requirements for Adopting Industrialized Construction Panel
Industrialized construction is widely positioned as a solution to the housing crisis – promising faster delivery, reduced costs, and improved quality. There is a critical digital infrastructure requirement to supporting these delivery models which is often poorly defined or even unspoken.
This panel brings together owners, researchers, and delivery leaders to examine what actually needs to be in place behind the scenes to enable industrialized construction as a scalable, repeatable capability. Beyond physical systems and manufacturing strategies, successful adoption depends on a coordinated digital backbone: structured data environments, standardized component systems, interoperable models, and clear information exchange across stakeholders.
Panelists will share real-world lessons on where organizations are underestimating complexity - particularly in data management, model standardization, and lifecycle information flow. The discussion will focus on actionable recommendations for asset owners and delivery teams to move from isolated pilots to sustained, portfolio-level implementation.
Attendees will leave with a prioritized set of decisions and actions required to enable industrialized construction programs that are digitally grounded, operationally viable, and economically scalable; ensuring blind spots are revealed and clarity is heightened to support digital infrastructure investment decision making.
12:30 – 1:30 PM
Lunch Featuring Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG) Presentation
The National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) is proud to relaunch the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG), a refreshed, modernized platform that continues to serve as a trusted resource for the building community. The updated WBDG features improved navigation, enhanced functionality, and expanded content to better support integrated, high-performance building design. This relaunch reinforces NIBS’s commitment to advancing best practices across sustainability, resilience, safety, and innovation in the built environment.
1:30 – 1:40 PM
Remarks from Michael Baker International
1:40 – 2:30 PM
Streamlining Housing Approval Through System Certification Panel
This session will examine a new national initiative led by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), in partnership with MOD X, to modernize the way housing is approved and regulated in the United States. The initiative focuses on developing a Housing System Certification Program, an alternative to traditional, project-by-project permitting that treats housing as a repeatable, performance-verified system rather than a one-off construction effort.
Panelists will explore how system-level certification could significantly reduce permitting and inspection timelines, lower project design and engineering costs, and increase consistency across jurisdictions—particularly for industrialized, offsite, and modular construction. The session will also discuss the structure and goals of the volunteer-led work group, the anticipated pilot-ready program specification, and opportunities for early engagement with authorities having jurisdiction, system providers, and other stakeholders.
By addressing regulatory fragmentation and enabling clearer approval pathways, Housing System Certification has the potential to accelerate housing delivery, improve affordability and resilience, and increase confidence for developers, lenders, insurers, and building officials alike. Attendees will gain insight into how this approach could reshape housing approvals and support scalable, high-quality construction nationwide.
2:30 – 3:00 PM
Coffee & Exhibit Hall Break
3:00 – 3:45 PM
How Building Code Officials Are Using Technology to Accelerate Permitting Panel
Building code officials are increasingly adopting new technologies to improve review processes, enhance consistency, and issue permits more efficiently—without compromising safety or compliance. This session will explore how digital tools such as electronic plan review, automated code checking, data standards, and workflow management systems are transforming the day-to-day work of authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs).
Speakers will share practical examples of how jurisdictions are integrating technology to streamline permitting, inspections, and approvals, reduce backlogs, and improve coordination with designers and builders. The discussion will also address change management, workforce training, and collaboration between the public and private sectors to support successful implementation.
Attendees will gain insight into how technology-enabled permitting can increase transparency, predictability, and speed—helping communities deliver housing and infrastructure faster while maintaining rigorous code enforcement and public trust.
3:50 – 4:40 PM
Investing in Lifeline Infrastructure Panel
Lifeline infrastructure—including water, energy, transportation, communications, and emergency systems—is essential to public safety, economic stability, and community resilience. Yet much of this infrastructure is aging, underfunded, and increasingly vulnerable to increasingly severe weather events, population growth, and evolving security threats. This session will examine why sustained investment in, and coordination among, lifeline infrastructure is critical to maintaining continuity of services before, during, and after disruptive events.
Panelists will discuss the consequences of deferred investment, the interdependencies among infrastructure systems, and the role of planning, design, integrated emergency response, and policy in strengthening performance and reliability. The session will also explore strategies for prioritizing investments, leveraging innovation and data, and aligning funding with long-term resilience goals.
Attendees will gain insight into how proactive investment in lifeline infrastructure supports community resilience, accelerates recovery, protects vulnerable populations, and ensures that critical services remain available when they are needed most.
4:30 – 4:45 PM
Day 1 Wrap-Up & Closing Remarks
5:00 – 7:00 PM
Networking Reception
Wednesday, May 20
8:00 – 9:00 AM
Registration & Breakfast
9:00 – 9:45 AM
Innovations in Modular Offsite Construction Panel
Innovations in modular construction are reshaping how buildings are designed, manufactured, and delivered—offering faster timelines, improved quality, and greater predictability. This session will highlight emerging technologies, design strategies, and production approaches that are expanding the capabilities of modular and offsite construction across housing and other building types. Speakers will share insights on how modular innovation is improving efficiency, addressing labor and supply chain challenges, and supporting scalable, high-performance construction.
9:45 – 10:00 AM
Break
10:00 – 11:00 AM
Breakout Session #1
System of Systems: Adapting Lessons from Other Industries for AECO
The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events—including flooding, wildfires, extreme heat, and severe storms—pose growing threats to the safety, reliability, and longevity of transportation infrastructure across the United States. Resilience has therefore become a defining concept for modern infrastructure management, encompassing the ability to anticipate, withstand, adapt to, and recover from disruptive events. This presentation provides a comprehensive state-of-practice review of resilience strategies for four key categories of transportation assets: pavement structures, bridge structures, geotechnical assets, and drainage infrastructure.
Pivoting forward from the state of practice, this presentation also will review nascent standards and frameworks for designing, testing, managing, and maintaining AI-enabled systems from transportation and other industries, and examine how they will likely influence the development of similar standards and methods for the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) industries. In the case of AI-enabled design and construction tools and building systems, the AECO industries can benefit from lessons learned in aerospace, defense, and automotive industries that are already further along in the development of AI-enabled systems standards, methods, and management processes for project development, validation, and operations.
10:00 – 11:00 AM
Breakout Session #2
System of Systems: Progress and Next Steps Towards Functional Recovery-Focused Reconnaissance Data Collection
Functional recovery (FR) is a new design objective that hastens the reuse and resumption of services and functions for infrastructure and buildings after earthquakes. The key metric for assessing asset performance is recovery time, and a key challenge in the current development of FR design is identifying what assets need to be recovered when. New partnerships and collaborations that span sectors and disciplines are necessary to plan strategically for the collection of high-priority data recorded with the methodological consistency needed to inform FR design. This session will provide an overview of functional recovery, a sense of what is unique about FR-related reconnaissance data collection, describe data needs for the development of FR design for earthquakes, and provide an overview of recent advances and efforts that enable effective collection of scientific and engineering data to inform advances in recovery performance for application to multiple hazards in future.
11:00 – 11:15 AM
Break
11:15 – 12:15 PM
Breakout Session #3
Housing: Case Study: Scatter Site Housing as a Scalar Solution
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM
Breakout Session #4
Industrialized Constrcution
Industrialized construction is transforming how buildings are designed, manufactured, and delivered—offering new solutions to long-standing challenges around cost, speed, quality, and labor shortages. This session will examine how off-site and factory-based approaches, including modularization, prefabrication, and advanced manufacturing, are reshaping the construction industry.
Speakers will discuss real-world applications of industrialized construction across sectors, highlighting innovations in design standardization, digital integration, and supply chain coordination. The session will also explore barriers to adoption, evolving workforce needs, and the role of policy, procurement, and financing in scaling these methods.
Attendees will gain a clearer understanding of how industrialized construction can improve project outcomes, increase resilience, and support delivery at scale—while maintaining flexibility, performance, and design excellence.
12:15 – 1:30 PM
Networking Lunch
1:30 – 2:30 PM
Closing Keynote
2:30 – 2:45 PM
Day 2 Wrap-Up
Monday, May 18
Pre-Conference BIMForum
DfMA Symposium
THIS HAS BEEN MOVED TO SEPTEMBER 2026
MORE DETAILS ON NIBS. ORG
8:00 – 9:00 AM
Registration & Breakfast
9:00 – 9:30 AM
Opening Keynote
9:30 AM – 12:00 PM
DfMA Lifecycle Sessions (Early Design & Feasibility, Design Development & Documentation, Fabrication & Manufacturing, Assembly & Site Integration)
12:00 – 1:00 PM
Lunch
1:00 – 1:30 PM
Rapid-Fire Tech Talks
1:30 – 2:00 PM
Integrated Case Study
2:00 – 2:30 PM
Closing Remarks