BIM models the building, but who models the cost?

For a housing development of 80 units, a project owner or their project management consultant receives between 60 and 160 proposals to review. A construction company that responds to several calls for tenders per month produces dozens of cost estimates without ever capitalizing on its past prices. A public buyer must objectively analyze the project, identify abnormally low bids, and document each decision—often under tight deadlines.

The observation is the same for everyone: considerable time is spent comparing offers, and despite this effort, inconsistencies are overlooked, price differences are not negotiated, and all the data disappears once the contract is signed.

The cost that cannot be measured

The time required for vote counting is a visible problem. The hidden cost lies elsewhere:

• Negotiation that a developer or owner does not engage in due to a lack of a solid price benchmark
• The rough preliminary estimate that is delaying a land arbitration
• The tender that a construction company cannot handle because its teams are overwhelmed with low-value tasks
• The analysis report that a public buyer must revise because it is not sufficiently substantiated

In construction, every week gained in the upstream phase has a direct financial value — whether you are on the client's side, the company's side or the buyer's side.

A sector rich in data, poor in memory

Over the course of projects, each stakeholder accumulates thousands of price lines. In theory, this data should allow for faster pricing, negotiation based on facts, and immediate identification of anomalies. In practice, it resides in disparate Excel files, depends on collaborators who eventually leave, and is never structured for reuse.

We digitize the model, the planning, the site management. But cost data — the data that determines the profitability of a project — remains the poor relation of the digitization of the construction industry.

What AI changes in concrete terms

This is where Sillant comes in — not as just another pricing tool, but as a cost data infrastructure.

Each document processed by the platform—DPGF, BPU, DQE, technical specifications, in Excel or PDF format—is automatically extracted, structured, and standardized. In just a few minutes, a comprehensive financial comparison is generated, including anomaly detection and bid versioning. For public buyers, the analysis is traceable, documented, and compliant with public procurement regulations.

Each consultation also feeds into a proprietary pricing database — the Pricing Bible — unique to each organization, never shared:

• For a developer or a project manager, it becomes the reference point for preliminary cost estimation and negotiation.
• For a construction company, it makes responses to calls for tenders more reliable and accelerates the production of quotes thanks to the automation of cost estimates.

After a few months, we no longer work from generic ratios or the intuition of a collaborator, but from the actual prices of our own operations.

A margin accelerator — or a reliability accelerator, depending on the industry

The impact depends on who uses it:

• Developer, owner or general contractor → a margin lever: identify gaps, negotiate on documented references, shorten the consultation-market cycle.
• Public buyer → a lever for security: to objectify the analysis, detect irregularities, produce a solid award report.
• Economist, MOE or AMO → a lever for productivity and credibility: processing more batches, faster, with demonstrable reliability.

In all cases, it's not about producing charts faster, but about making better decisions, earlier.

Who is Sillant

Founded in 2024 by Michael De Wit and Thomas Lecocq, and supported by Vinci (Leonard), Nvidia and the Greater Paris Metropolis, Sillant supports owners, construction companies, project managers and public buyers on projects ranging from a few million to several tens of millions of euros.

Presence at Digital Twin | Bimworld Paris 2026

Sillant will be present at the ConstructionTech Village, by Digital Twin | Bimworld, on April 1st and 2nd, 2026 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles. The event brings together 60 startups (Saqara, Freeda), institutional partners (CCCA-BTP, CAPEB, FFB, CFA, Compagnons du Devoir, Action21.fr) and major players in the construction industry to discuss the challenges of the sector's digital transformation (ONCE FOR ALL, ORISHA).