What Makes Design Forum Different?
Projects are won or lost before drawings are complete. LCI’s Lean in Design Forum stands apart from other AEC professional events by focusing on what happens before the work begins. It brings the Lean community together around the phase where clarity matters most: project validation and design. This is where expectations are aligned, decisions are made to last, and confidence is built before delivery ever starts.
Design Forum is the one conference dedicated to design as a driver of project success. It moves beyond aesthetics and technical solutions to focus on how teams align early, make durable decisions, and create the conditions for smoother delivery downstream.
Join us for this one-of-a-kind event that stands apart in four key ways.
1. Design Is Treated as a Strategic Lever, Not a Handoff
Project success begins upstream. Late surprises are often labeled “construction problems,” but in reality, they’re alignment failures. When expectations are unclear during design, teams pay the price later through rework, delays, and compromised outcomes. Design Forum reframes design as the moment where certainty is created and risk is either reduced or locked in.
2. A Decision-Making Forum, Not Just a Design Conference
The Lean in Design Forum is not solely a design conference; it’s a decision-making forum. This is the event where owners, designers, builders, and trade partners come together early to align on what matters most, before drawings are finalized and momentum makes change expensive. This is where Lean works upstream, when it still has the power to shape outcomes instead of simply reacting to them.
3. Bringing Forward the Conversations That Often Happen Too Late
LCI’s Design Forum creates space for the conversations that too often happen after consequences are already in motion. It’s our most intimate and impactful event, intentionally designed for leaders who care about getting alignment right before it becomes costly to fix.
The smaller-scale format enables meaningful dialogue, deeper learning, and stronger connections across disciplines. Attendees leave with practical tools, shared language, and renewed confidence in how they approach early project decisions.
4. Real Projects, Real Decisions, Real Outcomes
Presentations at Design Forum span a wide range of project types and delivery contexts, including healthcare, manufacturing, mission-critical facilities, and education.
The program’s emphasis is not on theory. It focuses on real behaviors, real decisions, and real strategies that help teams align expectations early and deliver stronger outcomes downstream.
Join the people shaping outcomes early.
If your decisions upstream affect cost, schedule, risk, or performance downstream, the Lean in Design Forum is for you! It brings together the full design and construction community to influence how projects are planned, aligned, and delivered from the start, including:
Designers, engineers, and of course architects
Gain practical Lean thinking and tactics you can integrate into design workflows to improve efficiency, support on-time delivery, and make design decisions that hold.
Owners and owner’s representatives
Learn how Lean practices applied during validation reduce rework and redesign, manage risk, protect capital value, and support long-term project performance.
Trade partners
Collaborate early with design and pre-construction teams using Lean tools that clarify scope, improve flow, and eliminate preventable rework before work begins.
General contractors
Avoid costly redesign and achieve operational excellence by using Lean design tools to build trust, create clarity, and strengthen decision-making from concept through completion.
Preconstruction, design, BIM/VDC, and estimating professionals
Strengthen early coordination and alignment to support better decisions, smoother handoffs, and more predictable outcomes.
Ready to Design Certainty Into Your Next Project?
The Lean in Design Forum is where alignment begins, decisions gain clarity, and project confidence is built early. Join peers from across the industry who are committed to shaping better outcomes before they’re expensive to fix.
Questions about the Lean in Design Forum program? Email Joan Piccariello for more information.
Interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at this year’s Lean in Design Forum? Email or call Ilene Goldberg at 703.785.9087.