Buildext 2022 Annual Review

When we started the year, we expected something quite different. Ok, it’s always said, and this year was REALLY special for everyone else, but still… the market, the attention of the industry, the projects, the maturity of the team… so we’ve had another valuable year full of lessons learned.

Let’s start with the most important: we designed more than…

Ah, no, no, let’s not just go through the obligatory big numbers. Not because who cares, but because it would be as sudden as a cold beer on an empty stomach in the morning, and because it is “only” a snapshot of a current state of affairs, a simple quantity indicator that cannot be used to do the work of a whole team for a whole year.

Let’s look at the story chronologically.

Beginning of the year

It was postponed from December, so we were quite looking forward to Construction Tech Review from overseas actually doing an interview with Csaba, the head of the company. It got off to a slow start, but it came together on the third try, so we only had to wait a couple of months for the print version. Well done.

Here we were just a paper dog-friendly office

Team breakfast at Buildext

Top Building Information Modeling Solutions Provider in Europe 2022 Award by Construction Tech Review

11:11 – one minute plank

Then, at perhaps the first professional event of the year, at the “Digital – Construction 2022” conference, our colleague gave a presentation on how we used Dalux in Continental Automotive’s Budapest site development project. Dalux is one of the most exciting construction companies in Europe, they have developed a very good project management platform and have an amazing amount of users. We have been using it for years in exemplary fashion, and in return, we are regularly invited to speak at their professional events, but more on that later.

And then it really started

But on many fronts. Obviously, there were projects, general design, logistics park digitalization, all kinds of space plans and fit-outs, full interior design, scan to BIM, concept designs, visual designs, and project management… we were not bored for a moment.

Meanwhile, our colleague Emese from interior design was on maternity leave, and HR and marketing were working hard to find the best people in the market. We didn’t just want to replace him, two other team members turned out to be expecting mothers, and there was more and more to do, so by the end of the year, we had grown by 10%, including a minimal turnover.

Emese from the interior design team facing new challenges

We presented at Portfolio 2022

We have also become a robot-dog friendly office

Sustainable innovation, products and services day at the Future Leaders programme

Online presentation for BME students

As usual, the spring was marked by presentations, fortunately with a lot of young people in the spotlight. We gave a presentation at the BCSDH “Future Leaders” talent program, at the BME’s engineering course, and a few days later we presented at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at Széchenyi István University in Győr. And speaking of BCSDH – to mark Earth Day, we’ve put together a snazzy infographic on why it’s important to transform our built environment with BIM.

At the YBL Professional Day in April, we helped students plant 1-1 trees on behalf of MyForest, and in the meantime, we prepared two new features for the year: the Revit Academy and the new buildext.com website. We presented at the Portfolio Construction 2022 Conference and on this occasion, we were interviewed in depth on portfolio.hu.

Meanwhile, we have become a dog-friendly office, and we don’t know if it’s a result of this, but we had a visit from Spot. The autonomous robot dog from Boston Dynamics scanned our office with our Leica scanner in a few minutes. We would have loved to bring him with us to PropTech Hungary 2022 to set up at our booth or join us on stage, but unfortunately, his schedule was too busy, so we couldn’t do that this year.

We didn’t make a big splash, but in June we launched the first training series of the free Revit Academy for students, which, after 4+1 weeks of intensive learning, we closed in August with an exam task and an open day at Buildext. And one of the participants, Gergő, was immediately offered a job, so he is now a full member of the team.

Summer break! Uh-huh…

I would say we took a breather, but no. We even picked up a lot of very useful skills at the team-building session on the Roman Riverbank (like how to flip 360 degrees around a bench without tipping over), but we also kept working hard. Our colleagues have presented or listened to professional presentations at Daikin, the German-Hungarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Cleantech & Green Business Days in Italy, the MVÜK Construction Forum, and many other events.

Then came the ISO19650-2 surveillance audit, which we’re quite proud of in hindsight. Because it’s one thing to have passed, but the fact that they could not find even a minor issue in our processes and not made any recommendations for areas for improvement is no longer average performance.

Presentation with András Cserkuthy (GLT Delta) at the Daikin event

Challenge accepted!

We’re getting ready for autumn rush

We always have time for each other

Finally, real dogs are in the office

We launched the new website in August, half a foot from Lake Balaton – although for now, it’s mainly a facelift, in 2023 we’re bringing something to our online platform that we’ve never seen before.

The abolition of KATA has caused a minor panic – in the market, but not at all in our company, at BuildEXT it is standard that everyone is 100% registered. What we have noticed, however, is that we’re suddenly getting quite a lot of really good CVs – never enough, of course, check out the jobs section here.

Autumn

The autumn was officially started on 8 September at BuildEXT; we were invited as guest speakers at the Dalux User Days in Budapest, where we spoke about ISO19650-based planning coordination, presented through the Sárospatak school swimming pool project. And speaking of ISO, we had a visit from Ákos Hamar from Plannerly, the software that we used to compile our ISO certification TOP 5 documentation of all time.

And since it’s been months, we held a team building again to have the strength to get through the autumn chase. We practiced speed, staying on the curve at full throttle, and to keep the students busy, we launched the 2nd stage of the Revit Academy and gave a presentation to the fourth and fifth-year students of BME.

We simply loved it

BME students learn about the practical application of BIM

Our unofficial motto: keep on the curve and push the gas!

Youth always bring something new and interesting, we love these occasions

What should the office of an architectural office manager look like if not this? (Photo credit: Forbes)

We played a good game of football at the Menyhárd 120 charity Santa Claus Cup, at the invitation of PEIKKO Kft and CEOS Kft.

Buildext – what else?

We give graduates not just professional content, but real help to get started

As part of Budapest Design Week, we opened our offices to the public for two days, and after one of them, several visitors asked us for a special opportunity to talk to them again about the future of BIM and their field. BCSDH decided to include us in their Time to Transform 2030 magazine because of our paradigm-shifting solutions.

We joined ÉVOSZ and were also invited to the annual meeting of the world’s leading organization for innovation in the construction sector (CIB, International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction), where 10 key national players and 15 international board members consulted on challenges and achievements in the sector, from New Zealand to Africa and the USA

We also made virtual spaces accessible during Budapest Design Week

The future in the form of digitalization has not only arrived, but it has also broken all previous rules

Betti, we look forward to seeing you back with the youngest architect!

Showing the future

Landscape architects, interior designers, students, developers, and many others were curious about the digitalization of the construction industry

With a breakfast together at the beginning of December, we slowly turned the corner to Christmas

We went to the Danish Dalux Summit 2022 as invited speakers again this year, and luckily we’re starting to get into these engineering events, which are in the thousands. A few days later, Copenhagen again: at the invitation of HEPA, we attended the BNCC 2022 construction meeting together with four well-known local construction companies, where we met the directors of the biggest Scandinavian construction projects.

End of the year

Then, as Christmas approached, we slowed down a bit. And so, out of the blue, we were interviewed by the surprisingly innovative Growth magazine (a podcast was also produced), and a few days later we were visited by a journalist from Forbes magazine, whose article about us appeared in the first half of December, including a quote from the formerhead of Continental AG (responsible for quality management and production support systems during the Veszprém site development project):

What’s left of the year? A tough leadership training series and the end-of-year toast, games, quizzes, and karaoke.

And of course to thank all our partners, friends, and colleagues for the year.

Obviously there’s no party without a nasty sun

End of the year group photo, minutes before the Christmas party starts

Clean dog, tidy house

Buildext team wishes you a Merry Christmas

Yes, we also have a mini ping-pong table. Yes, it is not always used as intended.

And the numbers?

OK, I promised at the beginning, here’s how far we’ve come: this year we’ve contributed to nearly

in the form of design, project management, digitization, or other ways.

We’ve worked on industrial facilities, logistics parks, clean rooms, restaurants, office buildings, condominiums, swimming pools, volleyball halls, data centers, sports centers, dormitories, factory extensions, FM software integration, and many more exciting projects.

What we are very, very happy about is that we are getting more and more orders where digitization, scan to BIM, model building, or model-based construction support is no longer a question.

Still, what was 2022 like?

Struggling, busy, volatile. Rushing, happy, experimental. Growing, changing, adapting. Capacity builder, service launcher, evolver-learner.

So… agile.

And what will 2023 be like?

We will probably continue in the same way, because that is the only way to manage constant change.

We need to focus on speed and rapid change. Not because it sounds good or because it’s trendy, but because digitalization is bringing it into our lives. And because it’s no longer a challenge for our team, it’s part of our daily routine.