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 firms and the way the software program improvement firm is reshaping the engineering and building business. René impressed me together with his vitality, enthusiasm, and keenness for RIB as a catalyst for enhancing effectivity and sustainability in these sectors.
Building companies 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 building, thereby bettering challenge effectivity and sustainability.
To start out 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 comparable to supplies, time, and labor, in the end producing a exact price estimate. This consists of all the pieces, 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 challenge 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 information 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; nevertheless, these instruments should not broadly adopted. René identified that “80% of all non-residential building 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 price range, which presents a major drawback.”
The development business faces challenges on account of its outdated practices, significantly the reliance on paper-based processes, which hinder effectivity. RIB affords 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 precious software 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 the perfect — 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 affords the potential to ship vital worth. Nevertheless, to comprehend this potential, high-quality structured information units have to be established to create digital twins. At the moment, the development business lacks these information units in comparison with different sectors, comparable to automotive, which have already constructed them. Subsequently, RIB and its companions should begin from scratch to develop high quality information 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 unpolluted, structured information just like the automotive sector — so earlier than AI can ship worth, we have to digitize, construct correct information 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 in regards to 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 simple 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 an in depth. 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 good friend throughout our quick time collectively.
