After his first two Professional Builder articles in the series on building information modeling (BIM), Contributing Editor Scott Sedam got a succint email from Sean Degen, former national vice president of product development for Pulte Homes.

“BIM moves complexity upstream to simplify construction and thoroughly understand material application and cost,” Degen told him. "That says it about as simply as you can," Sedam reports.

However, mastering the details and adding two more "dimensions" to the model – cost and time – takes some work with the "wondrous, sometimes overwhelming and frequently intimidating technology."