RIB BI+

What RIB BI+ is

RIB BI+ is a business intelligence tool from RIB Software, aimed at engineering and construction companies. The product page's title calls it "RIB BI+ (ex datapine)," so the product carries on under the RIB name what was previously sold as datapine. It is a dashboard and analytics builder, not a general app builder: you connect project data, drag fields into an analyzer, and get interactive charts and KPIs without writing code. The page says its interface lets "all business users, regardless of their analytical knowledge," build construction dashboards. The reader it fits is the project manager, cost planner or controller at a construction firm who wants budget and progress figures on screen without waiting for an analyst to build a report.

The company's site states that RIB Software is part of Schneider Electric, and gives its purpose as "To make engineering and construction more efficient and sustainable." The About page says the company has "over 60 years of history" and serves "over half a million users worldwide" across its products, and the copyright line names RIB Software GmbH. BI+ sits inside a larger product family that includes RIB 4.0, RIB BuildSmart, RIB Candy, RIB CostX and RIB SpecLive.

What you build and how

The editor is called the Analyzer. The company's site says it is "broken down into three main areas": the data source structure, the chart creator and the chart designer. You pick a field from the data source structure, drop it into the analyzer, and a chart appears. The site puts it this way: "drag and drop the desired field into the analyzer." Charts and KPIs take a few clicks, and the page describes the result as interactive dashboards built "without writing a single line of code."

Behind the drag-and-drop layer there are 2 more advanced features. Users can run cross-queries between different databases to get a complete analysis, and they can generate custom fields to analyze different scenarios and pull out deeper insights. The page also says you can generate ad-hoc queries to answer urgent questions that come up on site or in office meetings. That matters for construction data, which tends to sit in separate systems for estimating, scheduling and cost control.

On the data side, the page says "Professional data connectors allow users to combine data from multiple sources to get a 360-degree view of all operations." A section called Connect covers connecting all RIB product data sources to one central point of access, which the company presents as a single source of truth for project data so teams stop working from conflicting figures.

Templates and KPIs are where a new team starts. The site promises "25+ construction dashboard templates containing industry-specific KPIs," and a KPI monitoring system "with over 300 KPIs tailored to the use cases of the construction industry." The page's headline claims "The Largest Library of Best Practice Dashboards Tailored to the Construction Industry," which is the company's own description. You can generate your own dashboards or adapt an existing one "with just a few clicks." Interactive filters can be added so a dashboard answers questions as they come up during analysis. Dashboards can be customized "to meet the specific needs of the company and the different projects," so one company can keep different layouts for different projects.

Information in the dashboards is updated in real time. The page ties this to specific jobs: with live project data, decision-makers can control costs, raise planning quality, optimize budget development and prevent issues thanks to live progress tracking. It gives examples such as monitoring equipment inventory and evaluating activities on construction sites, and processes such as defect analytics, procurement management, estimates, quality management and project or risk overviews.

AI shows up in alerting. The page says RIB BI+ "uses classic thresholds and artificial intelligence to automatically overview important metrics around the clock," and that its data alerts are "powered by AI technologies, such as neural networks, pattern recognition, and machine learning," with self-learning capabilities that find patterns, anomalies and seasonality. You set predefined parameters, and the software alerts you when a target is reached or something unexpected appears in the data.

Reporting goes beyond the dashboard screen. The page says teams can get an overview of existing reports, standardize or customize them, and "generate weekly or monthly reports by setting up automation." Reports "can be easily shared in a number of formats," and dashboards can be shared with various stakeholders and accessed through a range of devices. A role management function lets you "define who can access and edit the data," which covers permissions when reports go to people outside the core team.

The company's guide to construction reporting shows what a finished dashboard looks like. It describes a project performance dashboard that opens with a chart of totals for budget, margin, revenue and costs, adds a completion percentage, and lets the user change the observed period with filters at the top of the report. On the right side it breaks performance down by work schedule, work performed and total actual costs. The guide defines construction reporting as documenting project data in an interactive format to support decision-making, and its numbered list of report types runs from progress and cost reports to daily reports that record weather conditions and workforce attendance.

BI+ reads data from the sources you connect and focuses on presenting it, rather than acting as a database of its own.

Plans, support and claims

The site publishes no prices; the route in is a demo, through a "Book Your Demo Now" button and a "GET MY FREE DEMO" call to action. A free demo is not a free trial or a free plan.

On support, the BI+ page says the company helps with "implementation, system navigation, and optimizing upgrades," and that its support staff are industry experts. Support and training appear as named services in the site footer, next to a Client Resources section, and the footer also lists Blogs, Case Studies, eBooks, News and Events. The site is offered in English, German and Danish.

The case studies page features customers of other RIB products, such as TSA Riley in the United Kingdom using RIB CostX, and Herbosch-Kiere in Belgium and the U.K. using RIB 4.0. Those stories are not BI+ deployments.

Who it suits and who it does not

RIB BI+ suits construction and engineering teams that want ready-made dashboards for their own industry. A cost controller can start from one of the 25+ templates and the 300+ KPIs instead of designing metrics from scratch, and a project manager can adjust a dashboard for a single job. Teams that already run other RIB products are the natural audience, since the Connect section is built around RIB product data, and a management team that wants weekly or monthly reports produced automatically will find that covered.

It suits teams of mixed technical skill, because the drag-and-drop analyzer needs no code, while the cross-queries, ad-hoc queries and custom fields give analysts room to go further.

The main limitation is focus. Everything on the pages is written for construction, from the templates to the example reports, so a marketing team or a software company would find little to start from. Terms are also only available through a demo, so a small firm cannot compare cost before talking to sales.