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 position inside the Schneider Electrical umbrella of firms and the way the software program growth firm is reshaping the engineering and development trade. René impressed me along with his power, 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 trade 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 development, thereby enhancing undertaking effectivity and sustainability.
To begin our dialog, René defined how RIB’s software program is used in the course of the preliminary undertaking stage—planning. After the architect creates a 3D mannequin, RIB’s software program can course of it by including particulars akin to supplies, time, and labor, finally producing a exact value estimate. This contains every thing, from customary paint on home windows to luxurious golden door handles, guaranteeing 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 undertaking 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 primarily based on high quality knowledge inputs, leading to high-quality outputs and improved effectivity all through the undertaking’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 development and engineering sectors; nonetheless, these instruments are usually not broadly adopted. René identified that “80% of all non-residential development tasks expertise value and time overruns of as much as 40%.” He emphasised the pressing want for options like these offered by RIB, stating, “Most tasks are by no means accomplished on schedule or inside finances, which presents a big downside.”
The development trade faces challenges attributable to its outdated practices, notably the reliance on paper-based processes, which hinder effectivity. RIB provides 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 invaluable device that may improve the effectiveness of those processes. Nonetheless, it’s important to establish 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 resolve 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 undertaking.”
Within the development sector, AI provides the potential to ship important worth. Nonetheless, to comprehend this potential, high-quality structured knowledge units have to be established to create digital twins. At the moment, the development trade lacks these knowledge units in comparison with different sectors, akin 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 digital twins and AI.
“In development, we don’t have the luxurious of a long time 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 in regards to the growing 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 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 short five-minute dialog—although it lasted over 45 minutes—we sadly needed to convey our dialogue to an in depth. René’s data and keenness for RIB created an insightful dialogue that broadened my consciousness of how development may gain advantage from digital transformation and allowed me to realize a brand new trade good friend throughout our quick time collectively.
