Nov 5, 2025
On 4 November at Urban Tech Hub Brussels, we did something different.
After 150+ events over eight years, EightySeven shifted from big stages to focused, challenge-driven conversations.
This wasn’t another tech showcase — it was a working session where leading builders and innovators tackled one key question: How can we make design and build more predictable, efficient, and sustainable through technology and collaboration?
1. The Format: From Presentations to Problem Statements
The 87 Build Meet gathered corporates like Furnibo and Cordeel Group with startups including Neanex, Aicon, Kite House, and Wave Through in a new roundtable format. Instead of keynotes, corporates opened with real, on-the-ground challenges slowing innovation in Belgium’s construction market.
2. The Challenges: Predictability and Sustainability at the Core
Furnibo, a general contractor with deep BIM experience, shared its ambition to make construction predictable - in cost, time, and safety. They highlighted three core challenges:
Building a seamless link between cost and BIM, connecting project estimation and execution in one digital flow.
Developing AI-driven insights to detect early deviations from planned schedules or budgets.
Continuously improving efficiency to remain competitive amid labor shortages and rising material costs.
They invited startups to co-create pilot projects toward data-driven construction.
Cordeel Group, one of Belgium’s largest integrated construction players, brought a different yet equally urgent lens: sustainability. They focused on sustainability, noting that 80% of a building’s lifetime impact is decided at design. Their challenge: convincing clients to prioritize lifecycle value over upfront CAPEX and integrating cost, carbon, and energy data through AI.
Both corporate stories underscored a shared truth: the industry’s future depends on predictability, sustainability, and data integration, not more isolated tools.
3. Startup Use Cases and Innovation Highlights
The second part of the session gave startups the floor - not to directly “solve” the corporate challenges, but to share real use cases and inspirations showing how innovation is already reshaping the built world.
Neanex: Data as a Common Language
Neanex presented its Asset Twin platform, Fundament, which structures fragmented project data into a single, reusable knowledge base. By treating BIM as data - not just a model - Neanex enables smoother collaboration and information handover across design, build, and operation.
Aicon: AI for Smarter Sites
Aicon demonstrated how its digital site assistant captures and organizes unstructured data - from photos to WhatsApp messages - transforming it into actionable insights for planning, reporting, and risk management.
Kite House: Simplified BIM and Circular Design
Kite House showed how its easy-to-use BIM tools empower on-site workers and designers to collaborate more effectively. Their focus on wooden structures, recycled materials, and automated sustainability checks illustrated how circularity can be practical, not theoretical.
Wave Through: Connectivity as the Fourth Utility
Wave Through tackled a surprisingly invisible challenge: poor indoor mobile coverage. Their passive glass technology allows strong mobile signal penetration without compromising energy efficiency, ensuring safety systems, sensors, and users all stay connected - now and in future 6G environments.
These stories offered inspiration on how digital tools, AI, and smart materials are helping the industry inch closer to the kind of transformation Furnibo and Cordeel envision.
4. Open Discussion: Collaboration, Culture, and the Belgium Bottleneck
Corporates acknowledged that integration remains the biggest barrier - with teams already using hundreds of software tools, any new system must add value without adding complexity. Startups, meanwhile, admitted that adoption depends on usability, not just ROI metrics: the people on-site must want to use the product.
As one participant put it, “It’s not a tech problem - it’s a trust and process problem.”
Participants also pointed to structural issues holding Belgium back - slow permitting cycles (7–10 years in Brussels), rigid procurement criteria, and limited government incentives to test new materials or methods. Despite this, the collective sentiment was one of optimism: the ecosystem is ready to move faster, together.
5. Outcomes and Next Steps: A Shift in Mindset
The key takeaway was clear:
To truly innovate, the industry must shift from short-term CAPEX to total cost of ownership, and from risk avoidance to measured experimentation.
As one attendee summarized, “Fail fast, learn faster - that’s how we’ll build better.”
Several participants expressed interest in follow-up pilot discussions and collaborative workshops - small, practical steps toward aligning data, sustainability, and execution across projects.
6. Beyond Formats: Building a Community
The 87 Build Meet proved that real progress happens not in auditoriums, but at the table - when builders and innovators speak candidly about what works, what doesn’t, and what’s next.
EightySeven will continue to host these smaller, deeper sessions - connecting those shaping the built environment’s digital future through shared challenges, practical solutions, and mutual trust.
Because in the end, we’re not just building projects.
We’re building a community shaping the future of construction.
A huge thank you to all the founders, innovators, and corporate leaders who made this discussion so impactful.
Bouwbedrijf Furnibo; Cordeel Belgium; AICON; JUUNOO; Neanex; KiteHouse.be; Wave Through; Willemen Groep; SmartEye; Bimefy.
💡 Next stop: check out our upcoming 87 Build sessions and partner events.
