Companion AEC
Companion AEC is a Spanish-built AI companion for architecture, engineering and construction teams. It turns site-visit voice notes, photos and documents into meeting minutes, tracked issues and punch lists, exporting them in the BCF standard.
What is Companion AEC?
Companion AEC is an AI assistant built for the AEC sector, meaning architecture, engineering and construction. Its publisher, the Spanish company Aelion, insists on the word companion rather than tool: the product is meant to act on its own initiative rather than wait for commands. The premise is that a site professional already gathers everything needed during a visit, by talking, photographing and taking notes, and that the cost lies in turning that raw material into paperwork afterwards.
The workflow the site describes has three stages. First you capture: you speak to Companion AEC in ordinary language and add photographs and documents. Second, it extracts and organises on its own, sorting issues, tasks, deadlines, photographs and pending actions. Third, it produces and proposes, returning site meeting minutes, issue registers and punch lists, suggesting fixes for recurring problems and sending reminders. The underlying engine is presented as Aelion Brain, described as a cognitive system specialised in construction.
Interoperability rests on a single claim the publisher calls BIM without BIM: issues are produced in the BCF standard, the BIM Collaboration Format, so they can be taken into any platform that reads it without the customer adopting new software. No named third-party integration is published beyond that format.
Three device contexts are described. The computer is where work is validated, reviewed and reported; the phone or tablet is where capture and action happen on site; AI glasses are presented as the natural device for the product, combining voice, vision and continuous context, though no hardware or brand is ever named. In practice the product is a web application reached at companionaec.aelion.io, with an installable progressive web app manifest and no store application.
Six use cases are set out in detail, each with sample natural-language requests: site manager, design supervision, health and safety coordination, quality control and testing, technical expert reporting, and maintenance companies. The public website is an eight-page Spanish brochure rendered entirely in the browser; access to the product goes through a demo request rather than self-service sign-up.
What it does
- Generate site meeting minutes and progress reports automatically after each visit
- Extract, categorise and manage site issues, opening, closing and archiving them on its own
- Build punch lists organised by zone, trade or priority
- Sort site photographs automatically by location, date and issue type
- Send proactive reminders about deadlines, pending actions and follow-ups
- Propose fixes for recurring issues based on lessons already learned
- Export issues in the BCF standard for any BIM platform that supports it
When to use Companion AEC / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Companion AEC is the right fit.
When to use Companion AEC
- Site managers who dictate their visit as it happens and want the minutes written for them
- Health and safety coordinators who must evidence risks and corrective actions without extra paperwork
- Design supervision teams (direccion facultativa) needing a traceable history of technical decisions
- Quality and testing engineers centralising test results, non-conformities and photographic evidence
- Maintenance contractors turning field notes and photos into client-ready intervention reports
When not to use Companion AEC
- Teams working in any language other than Spanish, since the site, the interface and the support are Spanish-only
- Developers looking for an API or an integration platform, as none is published or documented
- Buyers who need a published price or a self-service sign-up before talking to a salesperson
- Organisations requiring a signed DPA, a named security certification or a documented retention period
- Field crews expecting a native App Store or Google Play application rather than an installable web app
How to use Companion AEC
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Request a demo through the contact form, giving your name, company, email and role
- Wait for the publisher to reply, which the site promises within 24 hours
- Receive access and sign in to the web application at companionaec.aelion.io
- Install it on a phone or tablet from the browser if you want it available on site
- Create a project (obra) and start a visit from the device you carry
- Talk to Companion AEC in ordinary language while the visit is under way
- Add photographs and documents as you go, without classifying them yourself
- Let it extract and categorise issues, tasks, deadlines and pending actions
- Review the generated minutes, issue register and punch list, then validate them from a computer
- Export the issues in BCF format to whichever BIM platform your project uses
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Genuinely sector-specific rather than a general assistant, with AEC vocabulary and workflows
- Output in the open BCF standard, so issues are not locked inside the product
- Designed for hands-busy capture: you dictate during the visit instead of writing afterwards
- No software to install and no new tool to learn, according to the publisher
- Six distinct professional use cases documented with concrete example requests
- European data hosting is claimed and Spanish-language support is presented as standard
- The publisher presents itself as coming from construction rather than from technology
Cons
- No price is published anywhere, so the entry ticket is unknown before contacting sales
- Access requires a demo request; there is no self-service trial and no free plan
- Spanish only, with no language switcher and no internationalisation in the product
- No native iOS or Android application, and the AI glasses are described without naming any hardware
- Privacy policy and terms are generic templates with no company name, address, retention period or processor list
- No security certification, no DPA and no named subprocessor are published
- No third-party integration is named beyond the BCF file format
Pricing & Plans
No pricing is published. The website has no pricing page, the terms of use quote no amount, and the web application exposes no billing screen or plan selection, so neither a free plan nor a lowest paid price point can be stated. Access is arranged commercially: the site invites visitors to request a personalised demonstration, described as carrying no commitment and no cost, with a reply promised within 24 hours. That demonstration is a sales conversation rather than a trial of the product, and prospective buyers should expect the price to be quoted individually.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Companion AEC handles your data.
GDPR overview
The privacy policy names the GDPR explicitly and lists five data subject rights: access, rectification, erasure, objection and portability. It also claims technical and organisational security measures, storage on secure servers and access limited to authorised staff. Everything else is missing. No controller is identified by company name or address, no data protection officer is named, no Article 27 representative is designated, no legal basis is stated, no retention period is given and no list of processors is published; the policy simply invites readers to contact an unnamed data protection team without giving an address. The terms place the service under Spanish law and the exclusive jurisdiction of Spanish courts. Both documents read as unedited templates, and their last-updated line is generated in the browser, so it always shows the day you happen to read it.
Who owns the data?
The terms of use state that everything published on the website itself, including text, graphics, logos, icons, images, software and code, belongs to Companion AEC or to its licensors. Responsibility for anything a user uploads through the service stays with that user, who must warrant holding the necessary rights and not infringing third parties; the publisher reserves the right to remove content breaching the terms. Beyond that, no clause addresses ownership of the construction data the platform processes. The privacy policy only undertakes not to sell, rent or share personal information with third parties for marketing purposes, and allows sharing with unnamed service providers under confidentiality agreements.
Reuse rights
Reuse is restricted rather than granted. The terms of use forbid copying, modifying or distributing the site's content without authorisation, and equally forbid using the service to compete directly with Companion AEC, so no blanket permission to reuse the publisher's material exists. Conversely, the content a user uploads remains that user's responsibility: they must hold the rights to it and guarantee it infringes nobody, while the publisher keeps the right to delete anything that breaches the terms. Nothing in either document grants or denies the customer a licence over the deliverables the tool generates from their own site data, nor sets out any export or portability commitment beyond the GDPR portability right listed in the privacy policy.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
The only hosting statement on the site is a single line in the comparison table between Companion AEC and generic AI, which ticks data hosted in Europe for Companion AEC against variable for the alternatives. The privacy policy adds only that data is stored on secure servers with access restricted to authorised staff. No country, no hosting provider, no data centre and no specific region are named, and no processor list is published, so the European claim cannot be verified from the site. The terms place the service under Spanish law and the exclusive jurisdiction of Spanish courts, and the publisher is established in Spain, which makes an EU jurisdiction plausible but does not evidence where the data physically sits. Buyers who need this settled should request the hosting arrangements and the list of subprocessors in writing before signing.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Companion AEC.
- Contractual detail is thin: the privacy policy and terms are generic templates naming no company, no address and no retention period, so any commitment you infer from them is fragile.
- The privacy policy covers only the contact and demo-request data, and says nothing about the site photographs, audio recordings and issue records the platform itself processes.
- Delegating the writing of minutes and issue registers to an assistant that also decides how to categorise them can erode the professional habit of reviewing and challenging what ends up in a project record.
- Minutes, punch lists and safety documentation carry legal weight; anything generated automatically should be read and validated by the responsible professional before it is issued.
- The European hosting claim is a single tick in a comparison table, with no provider, no country and no audited region behind it.
- Headline figures such as a 60% reduction in documentation time come from unverifiable testimonials, two of which name no employer.
- Access, pricing and onboarding all run through the publisher, which makes early adopters dependent on a single supplier for a record that must be kept for years.
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low, but not immediate. There is nothing to install: the product is a web application, and its manifest lets it be added to a phone or tablet directly from the browser. The publisher states that it works with your existing workflow and requires no specific software or new tool to learn. What slows things down is not technical: access is granted through a demo request rather than self-service sign-up, so the start date depends on the publisher. Exporting issues into a BIM platform relies on the standard BCF format, which the customer imports on their own side.
Deployment
Supported languages
Behind Companion AEC
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What is Companion AEC?
What does it actually produce?
How do you give it information?
Do I need BIM software to use it?
Which devices does it run on?
Is there a mobile app to download?
How much does it cost?
Which languages does it support?
Where is the data hosted?
Who publishes Companion AEC?
Should you pick Companion AEC?
Companion AEC answers a real and unglamorous problem: the paperwork that follows every site visit. Its proposition is coherent and unusually well targeted, with six professional use cases spelled out and sample requests for each, and its choice of the open BCF format is the kind of commitment that can actually be checked rather than merely claimed. The publisher's argument that a construction team, not a technology team, designed it is consistent with the vocabulary used throughout the site.
The reservations are mostly about what is not there. No price appears anywhere, so the entry ticket cannot be assessed before a sales conversation; there is no trial and no self-service sign-up. The product is Spanish only, with no internationalisation, which settles the question for teams working in any other language. The legal documents are unedited templates: they name no company, no address, no data protection officer, no retention period and no processor, and their last-updated line is generated in the browser so it always shows today's date. Nothing about the construction data the platform actually handles is covered by the privacy policy, which speaks only of contact details. No security certification and no data processing agreement are published.
The website itself is very young, registered in October 2025, with no archive history, while the legal entity behind the Aelion brand appears considerably older. Buyers in regulated environments should therefore ask for the contractual and hosting detail directly, and confirm who they are actually signing with, before committing site records to the platform.
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