Europe's apartment crisis deepens. High construction costs, strict regulations and labor shortages have suffocated the range of affordable houses. When cities swell with newcomers and construction workers in mass retirement, the gap between supply and demand only expands.
Endless solutions were proposed. Mass apartment projects, revision of the planning system, modular buildings, prefabricated materials, rental controls and restrictions on company takeovers of houses were all examined with mixed success. But the lack of affordable living space has only grown.
Dutch startup Monumental has set up another fix: automation. The company develops a number of autonomous electric robots that work around the clock on construction sites.
Salar Al Khafaji, the CEO and co -founder of the startup, is of the opinion that the technology can overcome the workforce, costs and regulatory hurdles that cripple the industry.
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“It is obvious that we need some forms of automation and robotics to solve these problems,” he says TNW. “There is almost no other way.”
At the TNW conference on June 19th to 20th in Amsterdam, Al Khaji will give his tips on building a flourishing robotic business. Before his lecture, he outlined his vision of the future of construction work.
Why the construction was stagnated
Before Al Khafaji started monumental in 2021, he provided a visualization startup called Silk. As silk was taken over by the US Analytics Giant Palantir 2016He started thinking about his next company. His plan was to concentrate on a great global challenge.
“I wanted to solve a serious problem in society,” he says. “And I was obsessed with construction and infrastructure.”
Al Khafaji was stunned to see the little technological progress in the industry. As a result, the built world in which we live, work and play was severely restricted. His focus turned to a central problem: a productivity break under construction.
Local lack, strict regulations and high costs deteriorated the real estate crisis. New developments were very watery and constructed painfully slowly. They also often lead to unpopular buildings.
The past offers flattering comparisons. For example, the Empire State Building was completed in 1931 after only 410 days. 84 years later, the 432 Park Avenue took 1,500 days and were notorious for leaks, malfunctions and a splitting design.
The problem extends beyond pioneering buildings. The construction of standard houses has also lost the pace. The average time required for the construction of a single-family house rose from 4.8 months in 1971 and the earliest year with available data-on seven months in 2019. Even after this was scaled to take into account the growth of average house size, the process is even slower today.
Longer projects also bring higher costs, whereby the work often forms the mass.
“It is very, very labor -intensive because we hardly automated anything there,” says Al Khafaji.
Monumental is his attempt to revise the status quo.
Credit: Monumental Khafaji (right) and monumental co -founder and CTO Sebastiaan Visser. Credit: Monumental
Combating the real estate crisis
Al Khafaji founded Monumental in 2021 together with his long -term business partner Sebastiaan Visser, who acts as the company's CTO.
Her great idea was the automation of the construction on site with robotics and software. They started building a prototype crane crane, which developed into autonomous soil vehicles, which carry building materials around a construction site.
The first finished system from the production line focused on a decisive building: bricklayer. It was a logical starting point.
Maurering is a qualified but physically demanding and sometimes dangerous job with a rapidly dwindling workforce. In 2022, Researchers found out These 19 European countries had a mason minor, which made it a crew with the greatest shortage of work. As a result, construction projects suffer from delays and increased costs.
In view of the profession that is fighting to attract young talents, the lack of employees will only grow. In the UK, the number of bricklayers recently reached a low point of 25 years, and a third of them are predicted that they will retire within the next decade.
Monumental's systems aim to close the gap – and ultimately to strengthen the supply of affordable apartments.
The electrical bricklayer robots of the startup work autonomously alongside people. With sensors, computer vision and small cranes, the machines were exactly brick and mortar in walls.
The system also integrates into existing construction processes – a crucial requirement in an industry that is not always open to new technologies.
The robot builders
Al Khafaji compares the robots with distributed computers. They consist of several connected modular components and work such as network devices.
In order to prepare the machines for building jobs, the software regulations of the startup model both the website and the robots themselves. A machine stay stack then enables you to locate in the construction zone. As you work, AI coordinates her tasks.
“We really consider it an operating system for construction sites,” says Al Khafaji. “We try to make the construction more software -defined.”
In 2023, the robots completed their first large-scale 15-meter wall. Since then the machines have built Facades for housesPresent Channel support wallsAnd other structures that are in the Netherlands today.
The investors were impressed by the progress. Monumental last year Brought in $ 25 million in seed financing to bring the concept closer to reality. However, the company still has to win the construction industry.
Work of work in the apartment crisis
In the construction sites, many workers have changed relatively little in the past few decades. Maurer, for example, continues to work in the same way. In the shipyards, their jobs have changed their work through containerization and automated pickers – if not replaced.
Al Khafaji was shocked by the lack of innovation through construction. “It doesn't feel as if enough time, money or talent flow there … it is the industry with the greatest stagnation,” he says. “The construction basically works just like a century ago.”
It is a strange inertia given the size of the industry. The construction employs over 100 million people and accounts for about 13% of global GDP. Nevertheless, the sector can still not approximate the demand. Take the Netherlands. In 2020, the Dutch government set the goal of building 1 million new houses two thirds of them within a decade. Since then, the country has consistently declined behind the destination.
Automation and digital tools could bring enormous advantages for construction projects. But construction companies hesitated to take over them.
The industry is usually careful about new technologies for fundamentally logical reasons. Companies often work with boom-and-bust cycles and prioritize financial reserves before long-term investments in new, unproven ideas. The costs are enormous, the project cycles are extremely long and the project ranges are low and promote conservative and risk -averse strategies.
“Nobody wants to take a bet,” says Al Khafaji. “Imagine that you would build your own house for your family? Will you take a bet on a new material that nobody tried beforehand, or a process that nobody has done yet?”
The monumental hope of facilitating the concerns of the industry.
The robot marches into the construction of locations
The company offers services in a way that is known for construction projects. Quotes are offered in common market conditions, such as B. per square meter or brick. Standard materials are used, supply chains are conventional and customers are not asked to make Capex investments.
Instead, you can simply recognize which bricks and mortar you want and the company will build the project. You can also exchange the technology for human bricklayers at any time.
“We don't sell them robots,” says Al Khafaji. “We don't sell you software licenses … we sell you a wall.”
But bricks on walls are just the beginning of the plans of Monumumental. The company plans to apply robotics to numerous building tasks.
“A brick is just one component,” says Al Khaji. “You could imagine that the brick is different things – concrete blocks, window frames, door frames, roof elements. All of these things, they grab them, hold them and put them in a different place.”
The monumental estimates that these functions make up a third of the tasks on a construction site. While the technology is developing, autonomous machines could take over even more construction work.
Al Khafaji has big visions for the future.
“This is a fast science fiction version of it in which everything is automated,” he says. “You can imagine that electric robots will only come in for a few days and build beautiful structures in silence in a very short time – with limited pollution and more security.”
It is a long way to lay bricks, but the foundations are already determined – one robot after the other.
Salar al Khafaji will be among them outstanding speaker at TNW conference, which will take place in Amsterdam on June 19 to 20. Tickets are now for sale – Use the Code TNWXMedia2025 at the cash register to get a 30% discount on the price.
