Monolithic software tools still dominate the everyday work of civil engineers. Complex, collaborative workflows demand repeated input and data exchange operations. Furthermore, the accuracy of computation results often is still restricted by the limitation of desktop PCs. We introduce the BIMgrid, a work in progress to develop an innovative, adaptive framework for the implementation of customized civil engineering applications. It is a tool for software developers, which allows the flexible extension of existing applications and platforms with various functionality and their customization to the specific needs of engineering companies. We illustrate the architecture of the BIMgrid, the interface concepts for the integration of external tools and the utilization of their functionality by third party applications. We also present our reference implementation, which not only demonstrates the utilization of the framework but also can be used as a blueprint for the creation of a customized tool and hardware adaptation platform.