Lean construction, through its different tools, has enriched the construction industry with several ways to present reliable planning for the construction process. Nevertheless, the focus on planning design tasks is still incomparable to that devoted to the construction tasks. Additionally, lean construction and its planning tools and principles are still not routinely practiced in many areas of the world. This article tries to contribute to the existing efforts and shows the integration of lean construction with digital tools to improve the reliability of planning activities for design tasks in two projects in France in time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article results show that the use of lean practices helped avoid delays in design, better consider the client's expectations, and improve the collaboration between the participants in the design phase. The current study brings new insights into the applicability of lean practices in improving design management in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry.

Lean and BIM integration in the design phase may help achieve better design deliverables on the planned time and cost and consistent with the client's needs and requirements. With the absence of enough studies about lean-BIM integration in France, this study reports the results from a survey about lean-BIM integration in French design firms. The results of the study showed that lean is still not routinely adopted in these firms, and more than 95% of the firms do not provide training on lean. The evaluation of lean-BIM integration was neither high nor low; with a mean of 3.73 out of 5.00. Additionally, the results showed that BIM has still not delivered its full potential in the studied firms. The analysis of the results showed also a positive and significant impact of lean-BIM integration on design performance.