There are several different approaches to Industrialized System Building, and there are numerous variations to these. In order to fully understand the subject, we shall first discuss the principal characteristics of conventional buildings, and those of Industrialized Systems Building.

Essentially, conventional building usually starts one of two ways: Either with the need for a building be it a home, a place of business, a hospital, etc., —or, that somebody owns the land and decides to place a building on it to enhance its value and derive financial gains, either by renting the building, selling building and land or sometimes the building only, retaining the land.

In the first case, the future building owner has to find the land, either buying it or leasing it. The usual next step in either of the two ways is to retain an Architect-Engineer to develop building plans. When the plans are complete and approved by the owner and regulatory agencies, contractors are invited to submit bids, or a contract is negotiated with a General Contractor to erect the building. The General Contractor in turn negotiates contracts with Sub-Contractors for all or major portions of the work. The different Contractors develop detailed drawings referred to as Shop Drawings for their portion of the work and these are submitted to the Architect-Engineer for approval.