You Can Live in a City Without Trees – But It’s Not Worth It
Fast adaptation of technology may be even more important than innovation itself, since with already available solutions we can make the market better. But how quickly is the construction industry adapting? And what do clients want? These were also discussed at the PropTech Hungary Conference, held on May 22, 2025.
Although we hear about new technologies almost daily, and the advance of artificial intelligence promises unimaginable advantages in every industry, the world of real estate development has not even reached the point of exploiting the potential in existing tools. One such tool is spatial sensing, the practical use of which was the subject of a lecture by Tamás Borodi, Regional Manager Hungary at OpenSpace, a company dealing with spatial AI and digital twin models.
“How many times have we gone to a construction site, taken a thousand pictures, gone home, and the one picture we needed wasn’t there – I see many of you nodding, the situation is familiar,” he said with a smile, adding that ordinary smartphones are not suitable for creating shared reality.
The lack of this is responsible for countless frustrating issues worldwide: the builder, chief engineer, or contractor all see different realities, making disputes irresolvable and circular. The solution is reality capture with a 360-degree camera: according to Borodi, someone simply walks into a site, pulls out a small camera, makes a digital twin model with it, and thus creates the shared reality that was previously missing. Add AI, which anchors the image to the floor plan, and navigation becomes simple. Borodi emphasized that there is great demand for Spatial AI – artificial intelligence that enables full spatial sensing and manipulation – “we are close” to the day when the system itself will automatically detect every possible error.
Another existing approach is the LEAN methodology, the essence of which is to push projects toward efficiency by eliminating unnecessary frills. Today it is a common buzzword, though difficult to implement, as it requires leaving behind many habits and solutions and opening up to new procedures. A solution that increasingly supports efficiency in building services is prefabrication: building complex, easily repairable systems from pre-made elements. The topic was given its own roundtable at the conference, where Ádám Svantner, LEAN Manager at LEAN Optimal, András Cserkúthy, CEO of GLT Delta, and Ádám Ferenchegyi, BIM Manager at Bayer Construct, discussed the marriage of LEAN and prefabrication.
Although there are special cases when prefabrication and later assembly are not feasible – Ferenchegyi mentioned the super-heavy concrete elements of Puskás Stadium, which were cast on-site because moving them would have equaled another project – the industry is still moving in this direction. The more elements are prepared in factories, the faster the work can go. Yet efficiency does not necessarily depend on where things are made – Svantner stressed the importance of logistics and on-site efficiency, not to mention process planning, which the panel agreed is one of digitalization’s trump cards.
At the same time, LEAN thinking also means choosing new technologies to match processes. Cserkúthy shared that designing parts used to be faster on paper, but when they switched to 3D, suddenly everything became slower and more complicated, raising the question of whether the innovation was worthwhile.
“If someone is an innovator, they should immediately invest in digitalization, even if their processes are not good, because they must try it as well. But if one joins not as an innovator at that stage but as an early bird at the very beginning, then it makes much more sense to first put the processes in order and then select the right software for them,” he explained.
And what makes good software? It depends on the task, but there are already companies where AI plays a serious role in digital processes. Márton Kovács, developer at Iconsoft, spoke in his lecture about the areas where AI can already be applied in practice.
“In 2022, a client approached us with the task of counting valves on a so-called P&ID diagram,” explained Kovács. “We used an AI-based model that could tell with more than 90 percent accuracy what was a valve and what was not.” Symbol recognition was thus enough to extract mechanical elements from a 2D plan. While such a procedure is unnecessary in a BIM model, Kovács noted that pdf-based plans are still common, and in such cases the machine’s brain is the only alternative to a human manually counting the elements.
At Iconsoft, AI is also used for image generation. According to Kovács, different image generators are good at different things – he highlighted Stable Diffusion as a realistic example that can work from both image and text, with the composition defined by the user. He even presented a visualization made from a hand sketch that “took ten seconds.” Interestingly, Iconsoft also deploys large language models, which help with pricing – a complex task involving the reconciliation of very long texts. Kovács emphasized that AI still does not do the work instead of humans but provides enough support to make processes easier and faster.
Of course, there are things AI cannot help with – such as openness toward others, as demonstrated by Ádám Kovács, CEO of Brick+Data, with a simple request: everyone should shake hands with the person sitting next to them and introduce themselves! After the brief murmur of introductions, Ádám smiled and said: “Well, this is what the BIM map is about: creating as many handshakes as possible in the digital construction industry.” According to Kovács, collaboration between companies is essential, and there are many ways to achieve it, but joint decision-making is difficult because everyone focuses on their own field, which hurts efficiency. Brick+Data therefore mapped relevant companies – essentially building an industry-level BIM. Are you a designer looking for a contractor? Just specify where you are looking, and you’ll find one! The system shows each company’s BIM maturity, how innovative they are, what size projects they can handle, and their previous relevant work. Indeed, such a map would be useful in other industries as well.
