Digital transformation has been a hot topic across industries, and real estate is no exception.The challenge isn’t in recognizing its importance — it’s in understanding the mechanics of how to actually bring buildings online.The conversation around digitization is high-level, missing the fundamental first step:How do we even get a building into the digital world in a way that’s accurate and useful — let alone, scalable?

If we solve that, the real transformation in real estate begins.There’s over 1.6 billion buildings around the world. And by 2050, we’ll need to quadruple our footprint. Check out the digitization math here.With buildings online, new connections become possible — verified data can move freely between landlords, contractors, municipalities, and service providers.And when that happens, new economies emerge. That’s the unlock.At Integrated Projects (IPX), we focus on this three-step practical framework for real estate’s digital transformation:Step One: Digitize Buildings Accurately and at Scale — Reality capture, 3D scanning, and BIM are the picks and shovels that make this possible.Step Two: Connect Verified Building Data — With a digitized building, key information flows seamlessly between stakeholders, unlocking efficiency.Step Three: Enable New Economies — Accurate data changes how buildings are managed, transacted, and optimized at scale.Let’s break it down.Step One: Digitize BuildingsThe Picks and Shovels of Digital Transformation

Left: 3D scan; Right: BIMIT model

The starting point for bringing real estate online is getting an accurate, structured, and standardized digital version of a building.

Without this, the entire process falls apart.

Right now, building data is fragmented, outdated, and often unreliable. Often existing in a variety of formats — primarily: CAD files, PDFs, spreadsheets, and photos.

IPX solves this by:

• 3D Scanning & Reality Capture — Using tools like LiDAR and photogrammetry to scan buildings and create precise digital models — inclusive of a building’s existing architectural, mechanical, and equipment systems.

• BIM & CAD Modeling — Structuring scan data into industry-accepted formats that are usable across AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) workflows.

• Automation & Speed — Making the process fast, scalable, and cost-effective so that digitization becomes the norm, not the exception.

This is the work we do every day — refining the economics, standardization, and automation of reality capture and BIM to make building digitization something that just happens, rather than something that’s custom-built for every project.

But today’s existing solutions come with significant challenges that have kept digital transformation from scaling efficiently across real estate portfolios.

To date, IPX has digitized over 5,000 buildings totaling over 30 Million square feet across all continents and property sectors.

Real estate doesn’t lack standards, it lacks scalable services

The problem isn’t that standards don’t exist — there are plenty. BIM Forum, COBie, and various building classification systems all provide frameworks for structuring data. The challenge is that every firm picks their own, applying different standards on a project-by-project basis. No single developer, architect, or builder has the scale to enforce a consistent standard across entire property sectors or asset classes.

But IPX operates at a different scale.

Because we’re digitizing buildings across commercial, industrial, institutional, and residential sectors, there’s an opportunity to establish a foundational layer — layer one — where the basics are universally defined. A wall is a wall. A door is a door. A window is a window. By creating this baseline consistency, we unlock a level of interoperability that real estate has never had before, making it possible to query, compare, and quantify building data at scale.

IPX provides predictable rates for anyone looking to scan their building

It’s too expensive to document buildings at scale

Right now, the cost to document a building at a high level of accuracy is anywhere from $0.30 to $2.00 per square foot, depending on the complexity of the space and systems involved. That’s an unsustainable cost when applied across a portfolio of millions of square feet.

The biggest driver of this expense? Manual 3D modeling of architectural systems — a process that IPX is actively automating to bring costs down by orders of magnitude. By reducing the human labor required in the modeling process, we’re making accurate as-builts scalable across entire portfolios, not just for one-off projects.

IPX’s BIMIT Engine 3 improves the cost and speed to convert scans to BIM & CAD

Speed to document buildings needs to decrease from months to hours

Today, digitizing a single building is a process that can take weeks or even months due to the number of moving parts — on-site consultants, data collection, file processing, and manual modeling.

To make digital transformation a reality at scale, this timeline needs to be under 24 hours per building. That’s where IPX is focusing its efforts, partnering with emerging LiDAR scanning companies that are pushing the boundaries of capture speed and accuracy.

The goal? Reduce the friction in reality capture, drive down costs, and maintain the precision needed for acquisition, renovation, and facilities management.

These are the bottlenecks that have kept digital transformation in real estate from truly taking off.

By solving them — through automation, standardization, and partnerships with cutting-edge scanning technology — IPX is making building digitization something that just happens at scale.

Once we unblock building digitization at scale, we move to step two.

Step Two: Connecting Verified Building Data — The Real Unlock

Having an accurate digital twin of a building is powerful, but the real transformation happens when that verified data is connected.

Today, landlords, contractors, and municipalities operate on fragmented, inaccurate, and outdated building information.

By bringing it all online in structured, standardized formats, we remove inefficiencies and errors.

Some real-world examples:

• HVAC Contractors — Instead of taking manual measurements, they get a verified linear feed of ductwork straight from the digital model.

• Window Contractors — No need for site visits; they get an exact count and dimensions of all windows and openings.

• Municipalities — Instead of relying on self-reported, often incorrect floor areas, they get a precise, verified dataset for tax assessments and reporting.

This is what digitization enables: data that’s verified, structured, and actionable, not locked in outdated PDFs and scattered spreadsheets.

Imagine a world where landlords, contractors, and building product suppliers are operating with a free flow of information — where a landlord can choose to share a real, verified dataset of their building that includes the exact linear feet of ductwork, square footage of flooring, fixture counts, and equipment locations. Instead of the slow, reactive bidding process we see today, where every project starts with costly site visits and guesswork, building improvements could become proactive — based on real, trusted data that anyone in the ecosystem can plug into.

But the scale of the challenge is massive.

If we’re serious about improving existing building stock to meet new safety standards, regulatory requirements, and consumer demands, we’re talking about digitizing hundreds of thousands of buildings per day — not per year. That’s the real gap. And that’s what we’re working to solve.

Step Three: Unlocking New Economies in Real Estate

With digitized, connected buildings, real estate stops being a static, slow-moving industry and becomes a dynamic, data-driven ecosystem.

This opens up entirely new ways to operate:

• Automated Procurement & Maintenance — No more RFQs based on guesswork — contractors bid based on verified, real-time data.

• Portfolio Optimization — Owners get instant insights into their entire portfolio, making better decisions on renovations, leasing, and acquisitions.

• Regulatory & ESG Compliance — Sustainability and compliance reporting become seamless when accurate building data is readily available.

These aren’t futuristic ideas — they are already happening.

But the key to unlocking them at scale is solving Step One first: digitizing buildings in a way that is accurate, standardized, and scalable.

The conversation around digital transformation in real estate often jumps straight to AI, automation, and smart buildings — but without an accurate, digital foundation, those things are impossible.

Step One — digitizing buildings — is the hard, necessary work that makes everything else possible.

Once that’s in place, the rest follows.