René Wolf is the CEO of RIB Software program and a former gross sales govt at Siemens. On the primary day of AVEVA World 2025, he joined me to debate RIB’s function throughout the Schneider Electrical umbrella of corporations and the way the software program growth firm is reshaping the engineering and development business. René impressed me together with his vitality, enthusiasm, and keenness for RIB as a catalyst for enhancing effectivity and sustainability in these sectors.
Development corporations are grappling with inefficient workflows in an business with stagnant productiveness for over twenty years. RIB goals to vary this by using its suite of software program options to seize total constructing lifecycles digitally, from planning to development, thereby enhancing venture effectivity and sustainability.
To begin our dialog, René defined how RIB’s software program is used through the preliminary venture stage—planning. After the architect creates a 3D mannequin, RIB’s software program can course of it by including particulars comparable to supplies, time, and labor, finally producing a exact price estimate. This contains every little thing, from customary paint on home windows to luxurious golden door handles, making certain that each element is accounted for.
As soon as the preliminary estimates are produced utilizing 3D modeling, RIB’s software program can successfully observe and handle the end-to-end workflows of tasks. This encompasses venture security, price management, and the variety of subcontractors concerned. RIB’s software program suite eliminates guesswork and minimizes human error. It delivers real-time digital twins primarily based on high quality knowledge inputs, leading to high-quality outputs and improved effectivity all through the venture’s lifecycle, giving purchasers complete management over their money flows and prices.
Digital instruments for managing advanced end-to-end processes are extra essential than ever within the development and engineering sectors; nonetheless, these instruments should not broadly adopted. René identified that “80% of all non-residential development tasks expertise price and time overruns of as much as 40%.” He emphasised the pressing want for options like these supplied by RIB, stating, “Most tasks are by no means accomplished on schedule or inside finances, which presents a major downside.”
The development business faces challenges as a result of its outdated practices, significantly the reliance on paper-based processes, which hinder effectivity. RIB gives instruments that assist digitize these paper trails, enabling development stakeholders to handle their end-to-end workflows in real-time successfully. Synthetic intelligence (AI) is a helpful software that may improve the effectiveness of those processes. Nevertheless, it’s important to establish the enterprise use case earlier than integrating it, as René firmly identified:
“You may’t simply apply AI and hope for the perfect — it’s about figuring out particular, repeatable use instances that remedy actual enterprise issues, save time, and scale throughout prospects. That’s the place the worth is, and that’s what makes it a product, not a science venture.”
Within the development sector, AI gives the potential to ship important worth. Nevertheless, to appreciate this potential, high-quality structured knowledge units have to be established to create digital twins. Presently, the development business lacks these knowledge units in comparison with different sectors, comparable to automotive, which have already constructed them. Due to this fact, RIB and its companions should begin from scratch to develop high quality knowledge units that may present significant insights by means of digital twins and AI.
“In development, we don’t have the posh of many years of unpolluted, structured knowledge just like the automotive sector — so earlier than AI can ship worth, we have to digitize, construct correct knowledge units, and create digital twins that present what was deliberate versus what was constructed. That’s how we get from guesswork to automation,” defined René.
To finish our dialogue, we mentioned RIB’s future targets regarding the rising integration of AI. He emphasised the event of a real cloud-native Software program as a Service (SaaS) platform that’s user-centric and straightforward to undertake. Designed for the way forward for development, not the previous, RIB goals to create a SaaS platform designed to make the development and engineering sectors extra digital, environment friendly, and sustainable.
In what felt like a quick five-minute dialog—although it lasted over 45 minutes—we sadly needed to deliver our dialogue to an in depth. René’s information and keenness for RIB created an insightful dialogue that broadened my consciousness of how development may benefit from digital transformation and allowed me to achieve a brand new business buddy throughout our quick time collectively.
