BauKIT
BauKIT is an Austrian AI tool that turns a building-permit plan PDF into a structured quantity take-off and a priced bill of quantities, checked against ÖNORM, OIB and BauKG, with every figure traceable.
What is BauKIT?
BauKIT is an Austrian software-as-a-service product that estimates the cost of a building from its permit drawings. You upload the Einreichplan as a PDF — floor plans, sections, elevations, build-ups and dimension chains — and the tool returns two documents: a structured quantity take-off in which every figure carries its own derivation, and a priced bill of quantities ready to be issued. Along the way it flags additional costs the drawing does not account for, attaches a reasoned risk surcharge sized to the project and to the quality of the available data, and runs a plausibility check before you accept the result.
What separates it from a general estimating tool is that it is built for a single jurisdiction. The calculation rests on ÖNORM, OIB directives and the BauKG, and the vendor is explicit that this is not a foreign solution adapted for Austria. Coverage is claimed across every project type — new build, refurbishment, conversion, extension, storey addition and mixed schemes — and across the whole trade sequence, from excavation through structure, roof and façade to fit-out, building services and external works. Three accuracy levels can be chosen per project, from a fast preliminary figure to the highest precision for final calculations.
The second governing principle is traceability: no figure without evidence. Where information is missing, BauKIT marks it as an open data requirement instead of guessing, and you can pass it project-specific instructions in plain language — it adapts the calculation and says so when something is impossible for normative or logical reasons rather than quietly computing the wrong answer. The published sample project shows the idea working: a 253 m² detached house with demolition, 90 items across 18 trades, a net bill of €628,548 and a 9.8% risk surcharge of €61,598 for a total of €690,146, together with a red light stopping the offer because up to €230,000 of costs were missing.
Results leave without retyping as an ONLV file to ÖNORM A 2063 for Nevaris, ABK and Auer Success, as Excel for the take-off and the bill, and as PDF for the offer. A complete take-off is said to take around 25 minutes.
What it does
- Turn a building-permit plan PDF into a structured quantity take-off
- Produce a priced bill of quantities ready to be issued as a tender or offer
- Show the derivation and the source behind every single quantity
- Flag additional costs and missing items the drawing does not account for
- Apply a reasoned risk surcharge sized to the project instead of a flat percentage
- Run a plausibility check on the result before you accept it
- Export to ONLV under ÖNORM A 2063, to Excel and to PDF
When to use BauKIT / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if BauKIT is the right fit.
When to use BauKIT
- Austrian architecture and planning practices that need a defensible cost base before detailed design begins
- Master builders and general contractors putting together a tender bill of quantities under time pressure
- Construction accounting and audit offices that need an independent, documented second opinion on quantities
- Property developers testing the viability of a scheme from a cost figure per square metre of gross floor area
- Quantity surveyors and cost estimators who currently spend days taking off quantities by hand from PDF drawings
When not to use BauKIT
- Construction professionals outside Austria: the calculation is built on ÖNORM, OIB and BauKG rather than adapted from a foreign product
- Consumers and private individuals: the terms restrict contracts to businesses and exclude consumers outright
- Teams working from BIM or IFC models: the only documented input is a PDF building-permit drawing
- Buyers who need a published price list or self-service sign-up, since access runs through a demo and a pilot-customer programme
- Developers wanting to automate estimating programmatically: there is no public API and no technical documentation
How to use BauKIT
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Request a demo through the form on the site; the team answers within 24 hours and the first meeting is non-binding
- Alternatively, download the complete sample project first to judge the output before talking to anyone
- Agree terms under the pilot-customer programme, then have your account activated by the vendor
- Sign in to the web application at app.baukit.at — nothing is installed locally
- Upload your building-permit drawing as a PDF; floor plans, sections and elevations are enough
- Choose the accuracy level for the project: highest precision, balanced, or fast
- Add any project-specific instructions in plain language while the calculation runs
- Let BauKIT identify the services contained in the drawing, compute the quantities and check the result against Austrian standards
- Review the plausibility check, the flagged additional costs and the reasoned risk surcharge before accepting anything
- Export the ONLV file into Nevaris, ABK or Auer Success, and the take-off, bill and offer as Excel and PDF
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Every quantity carries its derivation and its source, and the result can be checked in Excel
- Designed natively for the Austrian standards framework rather than adapted from a foreign product
- Actively looks for what is missing: the published case found up to €230,000 of unpriced costs and a six-metre contradiction between two drawing revisions
- Refuses to issue an offer it judges unsendable instead of smoothing the numbers over
- Risk surcharge is argued and project-specific rather than a blanket percentage
- Output is immediately usable: ONLV for Austrian AVA packages, Excel for the take-off and the bill, PDF for the offer
- Unusually complete legal disclosure for such a young product: all seven subprocessors named, published Article 28 agreement, no-training commitment from both AI providers, EU storage for accounts and drawings
Cons
- No published price at all: everything runs through a demo and an individually negotiated pilot-customer programme
- No self-service sign-up, no permanent free plan and no advertised free trial; the terms state that use is chargeable
- Early-stage product by the vendor's own admission, with structured data marking availability as pre-order
- Usable only for Austrian projects by design, and the site and interface exist only in German
- No public API and no technical documentation, so no programmatic integration is possible
- No mobile application, and the only documented input is a PDF permit drawing rather than a BIM or IFC model
- The terms disclaim any warranty on completeness or accuracy of the AI output and place the duty of professional review on the customer
Pricing & Plans
BauKIT publishes no price. There is no permanent free plan and no advertised free trial: the terms state that use is chargeable according to the tariff selected, and the pricing page offers only a pilot-customer programme with the price quoted on request after a non-binding first meeting. Billing and payment run through Stripe, prices are exclusive of statutory VAT unless stated otherwise, and the structured data on the site marks availability as pre-order. The only element available at no cost is the complete sample project, which can be downloaded after an e-mail double opt-in. No lowest paid price point can therefore be quoted.
- Pilot-customer programme — price on request
- after a non-binding first meeting
- scope
- model choice and terms are agreed individually
- and include personal onboarding on your own permit drawings
- a direct line to the team and terms for early partners
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how BauKIT handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is concrete rather than declaratory. Devion Digitalagentur Wien, Etrichstraße 41/18, 1110 Vienna, is named as controller and reachable at office@baukit.at. A full Article 28 processing agreement dated June 2026 is published openly, alongside a separate privacy notice for the application. It sets out the Article 32 measures — TLS in transit, authentication with role-based access, tenant separation, secured cloud storage, vetted subprocessors — offers a detailed technical and organisational measures document on request, and commits to notifying breaches without delay. Transfers outside the EEA rest on Standard Contractual Clauses under Article 46. Access, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection are all listed, with a right of complaint to the Austrian data protection authority. One reservation: the website privacy notice still states that the text is a template to be completed and legally reviewed before publication.
Who owns the data?
The terms are explicit: Devion acquires no ownership rights over the drawings and inputs a customer uploads, and processes them solely to deliver the service. Rights in the software and the underlying technology stay with Devion. On the generated results, the quantity take-off and the priced bill of quantities, the customer receives the rights needed for contractual commercial use. For personal data contained in uploaded plans, including third parties such as building owners, the customer is normally the controller and Devion acts as processor under the published Article 28 agreement; for account, contract and billing data Devion is itself the controller.
Reuse rights
The customer can reuse the output without asking permission: the rights granted on the take-off and the priced bill of quantities cover commercial use under the contract, so the results can be turned into a tender, an offer or an ONLV import into an existing AVA package with no further clearance. Devion's own use of the material is confined to delivering the service. Plan text and rendered plan extracts go to Anthropic for the AI analysis and search phrases go to OpenAI for embeddings, in both cases through commercial APIs that the processing agreement states do not use the data for model training. Processing takes place only on the customer's documented instruction, and contractual use of the service counts as that instruction. Deleting a conversation or a drawing in the service removes the associated files and database entries.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Storage of the material that matters most stays inside the EU. Supabase holds the database, file storage and authentication — accounts, conversations, transcripts, results and uploaded drawings — and Railway runs the backend application containers, both declared as processing in the EU under a data processing agreement. Everything else sits outside. Vercel hosts and delivers the front end from the United States over a global CDN, handling technical connection data such as IP addresses. Anthropic processes plan and chat data for the AI analysis in the United States, and OpenAI generates the vector embeddings for the item-catalogue search there too. Stripe Payments Europe in Ireland and Stripe in the United States handle payment and subscription management, and Resend sends transactional e-mail from the United States. Every transfer outside the EEA is said to rest on appropriate safeguards under Article 46, in particular Standard Contractual Clauses supplemented by any additional measures required, with the specific guarantees documented in each provider's processing agreement. The controller itself is established in Vienna, and Austrian law applies.
Where BauKIT works
Country-level availability.
Available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting BauKIT.
- The terms oblige you to review every result professionally before using it for an offer, an award, a settlement or disclosure to third parties — the responsibility for the numbers stays with you
- No warranty is given on completeness or accuracy, and liability for AI-generated results, lost profit, consequential damage and mistaken costing decisions is excluded as far as the law allows
- Confidence in a fast, well-presented calculation can erode the habit of checking quantities by hand; the tool is explicitly not a substitute for engaging licensed professionals
- Permit drawings routinely contain personal data of third parties such as building owners, and it is you, not the vendor, who is the controller for them
- Plan text, rendered plan extracts and chat inputs are transmitted to providers in the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses
- Backing up results and exports is your responsibility under the terms, and after the contract ends the export window is only 30 days
- The terms can be changed unilaterally with tacit acceptance if you do not object within six weeks, and the website privacy notice still carries a template warning
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low on the technical side, once you are in. Nothing is installed: BauKIT is a web application, you upload a PDF and collect the exports. The real barrier is access rather than setup — an account has to be activated by the vendor after a demo and agreement on pilot-customer terms, so this is not self-service. Personal onboarding on your own permit drawings is part of that programme. Downstream integration means importing an ONLV file into your existing AVA package, with no retyping. No programming skills are needed; professional construction expertise is, because the terms require you to verify every result.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind BauKIT
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly does BauKIT do?
What do I need to give it?
How accurate is the calculation?
How long does a calculation take?
What does it cost?
In what format do I get the result?
Is my data used to train AI models?
Where is my data stored?
Can I see the output before committing?
Can I rely on the result as it stands?
Should you pick BauKIT?
BauKIT is a narrow tool that knows exactly what it is: one task, one country, one language. It converts an Austrian building-permit PDF into a quantity take-off and a priced bill of quantities, and it stakes its credibility on being checkable — every quantity carries its derivation, missing information is declared as an open data requirement rather than guessed, and the risk surcharge is argued rather than assumed. The published sample project is the strongest evidence for that claim: faced with a scheme missing demolition costs, a pollutant survey and a coherent excavation level, the tool stopped the offer instead of smoothing it over. Estimating software that refuses to produce a number is unusual, and in a discipline where one forgotten item eats the margin, it is the right instinct.
The reservations are those of a very young product. Devion, the Vienna sole proprietorship behind it, was founded in 2026; access runs through a personal demo and a pilot-customer programme rather than sign-up; and no price is published, so there is nothing to compare. There is no API, no mobile application, and the site and interface exist only in German. Plan data and chat inputs travel to Anthropic and OpenAI in the United States under Standard Contractual Clauses — disclosed clearly, but it will matter to some buyers. The terms disclaim any warranty on the accuracy of AI-generated results and place the duty of professional review squarely on the customer.
Set against that, the legal transparency is unusually complete for a product this early: a named list of all seven subprocessors, a published Article 28 agreement, a no-training commitment from both AI providers, and EU storage for accounts and drawings. Download the sample project first — it costs nothing and shows the output better than any description can.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
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