A Long-Term Goal: Making Good Building More Accessible Again

Perhaps many people recognise that feeling. You take responsibility, try to move forward step by step, and eventually realise that the distance between you and a home of your own has not become smaller, but greater.

Is that merely a personal impression?

Not entirely. According to the OECD, residential property prices in Austria increased by 163 per cent between 2005 and 2023. That was almost three times the increase recorded across the euro area. Rents also rose by more than 75 per cent over a period of 15 years. The Oesterreichische Nationalbank observed a degree of stabilisation in 2025: prices increased by 2.1 per cent in nominal terms and declined when adjusted for inflation. But that does not mean the long-term loss of affordability has disappeared.^{1, 3}

At the same time, new residential construction has fallen sharply. In 2025, a total of 47,636 dwellings were approved in Austria, including units created through extensions, additional storeys and conversions. Only 31,979 of them were located in new buildings — the lowest figure since comparable records began in 2010. The data for 2025 remain provisional, but the direction is nevertheless clear.²

This has occupied my thoughts for some time.

Not as a complaint, and not in search of a single person or institution to blame. Reality, unfortunately, rarely conforms to presentations featuring three arrows and a circle in the middle.

What interests me is a different question:

Why has good housing become more difficult for so many people to access, and how much of that development is genuinely unavoidable?

It is not just about the price per square metre

Anyone who looks more closely at building quickly realises that there is no single cause.

Land. Financing. Regulation. Planning. Permits. Construction. Logistics. Operation.

All these factors are interconnected.

According to the OECD, construction costs in Austria have increased by around 22 per cent since the end of 2020. Average purchase prices for buildable land rose by roughly 90 per cent between 2013 and 2023.¹

None of this can be eliminated by an app, a new data format or a little artificial intelligence.

I do not believe that a digital product can solve the housing question. Anyone who claims otherwise is turning a social, economic and spatial challenge into a remarkably simple product presentation.

And honestly, that would also be a rather ambitious assignment for a first product.

But some costs arise where nobody intentionally plans them

What interests me most professionally is another, less visible part of the problem.

Not the concrete.
Not the steel.
Not the working hour.

But the moments in between.

When information is missing.

When different participants are working with different levels of information.

When decisions are made too late.

When something has to be produced again even though it already existed somewhere before.

When, in the end, nobody can say with certainty which information was intended for which next step.

These situations do not automatically arise because people are doing their jobs badly. Quite the opposite: many people in construction carry considerable professional and financial responsibility every day.

But the system is complex.

Architects, specialist planners, contractors, manufacturers, clients, public authorities and future operators work with different tools, terminology and expectations. At every handover, part of the context can be lost.

Research into rework in construction also describes this relationship. In a study of 260 completed building and civil engineering projects, project communication was among the statistically significant factors influencing rework costs. A later longitudinal study of a transport megaproject showed how misunderstandings, differing interpretations, unclear roles and disrupted communication can contribute to rework.^{4, 5}

That does not mean that every poor handover automatically makes a building more expensive. And it certainly does not mean that better software can make land prices or financing costs disappear.

But it does show that not every resource spent creates new value.

That is why the question that interests me is not primarily:

How can we immediately build more cheaply for everyone tomorrow?

That would be too simple an answer to a very difficult problem.

A better question is:

How can we make the building process itself more understandable, more predictable and less wasteful?

Technology is not the goal. It is a tool.

I do not believe that the construction industry simply needs more technology.

It needs better systems.

Systems that help people to:

• identify relevant issues earlier;
• pass information on in a more traceable way;
• prepare decisions more effectively;
• avoid unnecessary repetition;
• and understand the next step more clearly.

BIM, IFC, automation and artificial intelligence are not solutions in themselves.

A digital model does not replace experience.

AI does not replace responsibility.

And a standard does not replace good collaboration.

IFC is an open international standard for exchanging BIM data between the different participants and software applications involved in the construction and real-estate sectors. A standard can provide the foundation for exchange. But it does not automatically guarantee that every file contains the information required for its specific intended use, or that the recipient will immediately understand what is present and what still needs to be clarified. That requires defined requirements, appropriate workflows and traceable handovers.⁷

Technology is valuable to me when it supports people — not when it merely makes something that was already complicated even more complicated.

Reducing friction is not only a social question. It can also contribute to more reliable budgets, better-prepared decisions, lower project risks and a more robust basis for investment.

ArchOS: a small step at a major interface

ArchOS begins at one small part of this interface.

Not with land prices.

Not with financing.

Not with the approval of a building.

Those would be several orders of magnitude beyond what a first product can reasonably achieve.

ArchOS is concerned with a narrower question:

How can existing information from IFC models be documented more clearly and traceably at the point of handover?

An IFC model can contain a great deal of information.

But information alone does not automatically create clarity.

The important questions are:

What is visible?
What remains open?
What should still be clarified before the next step?

That digital building information really is lost between project phases, or has to be prepared again later, is also the subject of research. A study published in 2024 on information handover to facility management documented substantial data loss during the handover process and the resulting rework required to integrate the delivered information. The study relates specifically to the transition into facility management; it does not prove that every IFC handover is equally problematic. But it does show how important the quality and traceability of information handovers can be.⁶

ArchOS is intended to make existing IFC model information visible in a structured way and document it as a traceable internal basis for decision-making:

What can be identified?
What remains unresolved?
And which point should be considered before a model is passed on or the next working step begins?

ArchOS does not issue approvals.

It does not certify a model or make statements of conformity.

It does not perform architectural, engineering, legal or any other professional assessment.

The professional decision and the responsibility that comes with it remain with the people who make it.

And that is exactly how it should be.

ArchOS does not solve the housing question. It is a deliberately small beginning at a very specific point.

But one has to begin somewhere.

The long road

I do not know the complete solution today.

And honestly, I do not know how large my own contribution will ultimately be. That may sound less impressive than a grand founder story, but it is closer to the truth.

Good building depends on people, knowledge, regulations, materials, financing, collaboration and technology. There is probably no single solution, but rather many steps that need to work together in a meaningful way.

But I do know which question I want to dedicate my work to over the long term:

How can we create systems that make good building simpler, more traceable and accessible to more people?

ANGERMAYER begins with a small step.

Not with the claim that all the answers are already known.

But with an attempt to understand a complex system more deeply and create improvements where they are genuinely possible.

This is not a promise for tomorrow.

It is a direction for the years ahead.

A question for you

In your experience, where do avoidable costs, information loss or unnecessary uncertainty arise today when residential buildings are planned and constructed?

I welcome perspectives from architects, engineers, construction and project managers, BIM professionals, contractors, manufacturers and clients, as well as from people who are currently trying to find or create a home of their own.