René Wolf is the CEO of RIB Software program and a former gross sales government at Siemens. On the primary day of AVEVA World 2025, he joined me to debate RIB’s function inside the Schneider Electrical umbrella of corporations and the way the software program growth firm is reshaping the engineering and building business. René impressed me along with his vitality, enthusiasm, and keenness for RIB as a catalyst for enhancing effectivity and sustainability in these sectors.
Development companies are grappling with inefficient workflows in an business with stagnant productiveness for over 20 years. RIB goals to alter this by using its suite of software program options to seize total constructing lifecycles digitally, from planning to building, thereby enhancing challenge effectivity and sustainability.
To begin our dialog, René defined how RIB’s software program is used throughout the preliminary challenge stage—planning. After the architect creates a 3D mannequin, RIB’s software program can course of it by including particulars corresponding to supplies, time, and labor, in the end producing a exact value estimate. This consists of all the things, from normal 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 challenge security, value management, and the variety of subcontractors concerned. RIB’s software program suite eliminates guesswork and minimizes human error. It delivers real-time digital twins based mostly on high quality knowledge inputs, leading to high-quality outputs and improved effectivity all through the challenge’s lifecycle, giving purchasers complete management over their money flows and prices.
Digital instruments for managing complicated end-to-end processes are extra essential than ever within the building and engineering sectors; nonetheless, these instruments aren’t broadly adopted. René identified that “80% of all non-residential building tasks expertise value 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 drawback.”
The development business faces challenges as a consequence of its outdated practices, notably the reliance on paper-based processes, which hinder effectivity. RIB provides instruments that assist digitize these paper trails, enabling building stakeholders to handle their end-to-end workflows in real-time successfully. Synthetic intelligence (AI) is a useful instrument that may improve the effectiveness of those processes. Nevertheless, it’s important to determine the enterprise use case earlier than integrating it, as René firmly identified:
“You possibly can’t simply apply AI and hope for one of the best — it’s about figuring out particular, repeatable use circumstances 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 challenge.”
Within the building sector, AI provides the potential to ship vital worth. Nevertheless, to understand this potential, high-quality structured knowledge units should be established to create digital twins. Presently, the development business lacks these knowledge units in comparison with different sectors, corresponding to automotive, which have already constructed them. Subsequently, 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 building, we don’t have the luxurious of a long time of fresh, 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 objectives 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 building, 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 short five-minute dialog—although it lasted over 45 minutes—we sadly needed to deliver our dialogue to a detailed. René’s information and keenness for RIB created an insightful dialogue that broadened my consciousness of how building may gain advantage from digital transformation and allowed me to achieve a brand new business buddy throughout our quick time collectively.
