AI by industry

AI for architecture firms in Portugal

Portuguese practices do not lose money on design. They lose it on the licensing process that follows, and on rebuilding the same specification for the fortieth time.

Run the numbers on a small Portuguese practice and the pattern is consistent. Design is the work that gets billed and enjoyed. Around it sits a body of administration that is unbillable, deadline bound, and different in every municipality: the licensing route under the RJUE, the pedido de informacao previa, the choice between licenciamento and comunicacao previa, the document list that each camara publishes in its own format on its own portal, and the correspondence that follows every submission.

Where the unbillable hours actually go

• Working out which rules apply. Every municipality has its own PDM with its own building indices, setbacks, height limits and use classes. Establishing what a specific plot allows means reading a regulation that was written for a different audience.
• Assembling the submission. Different camaras want different annexes, different forms, different file naming and different declarations. The pack is rebuilt each time even when the project type repeats.
• Specification writing. The caderno de encargos and the mapa de quantidades are largely repeated text with project specific substitutions, retyped because nobody trusts the last version.
• Chasing specialities. Structures, water, electrical, thermal and acoustic projects arrive from different consultants on different timelines and nobody submits until the last one lands.
• Correspondence. The camara asks for a clarification months later, and someone has to reconstruct what was submitted and why.

What is genuinely automatable

Document assembly and retrieval, first. An agent that holds every specification your practice has written and drafts the new caderno de encargos from the closest prior project turns a day into an hour, with the architect editing rather than typing. Correspondence tracking, second: every submission logged with its dates, its outstanding items and its responsible person, so a clarification request does not start with an archaeology exercise. Speciality chasing, third, because that is a scheduling problem and machines are good at those.

Reading municipal planning rules is the one that surprises people. Digiton runs its own product in this area, Parci at parci.eu, which analyses 308 Portuguese municipalities and returns a report in 47 seconds. We know this problem from inside it rather than from a slide.

What should never be automated

Design judgement, structural decisions, and anything an architect signs. A language model does not carry professional liability and cannot be the reason a submission was wrong. The workable line is that the machine drafts, retrieves, tracks and chases, and a qualified person reviews and signs. Practices that hold that line get the hours back. Practices that blur it spend the saved time on checking.

Digiton builds and operates these systems rather than selling a tool. A short AI audit follows one licensing submission through your practice and shows where the unbillable time is going.

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