Design professionals in the construction industry widely use the term “parametric”. Despite this there is a paucity of applied guidelines for developing parametric models. It is possible to attend workshops and learn the mechanics of a specific applications and access online repositories of ‘design patterns’, but the cognitive process of application in practice has received little recent attention. Analysis and ex- perience of practice indicates that acquisition of new knowledge and capture of existing knowledge are the basis for all parametric tasks. This paper exposes a deeper understanding of the role of the parametric designer and proposes an applied strategic framework.