Europe’s housing crisis is deepening. High building costs, tight regulations, and labour shortages have choked the supply of affordable homes. As cities swell with new arrivals and construction workers retire en masse, the gap between supply and demand is only widening.

Endless solutions have been proposed. Mass housing projects, revamping the planning system, modular buildings, pre-fabricated materials, rent controls, and restrictions on corporate acquisitions of homes have all been explored with mixed success. But the shortage of affordable housing has only grown.

Dutch startup Monumental has pitched another fix: automation. The company is developing a suite of autonomous, electric robots that work on construction sites around the clock.

Salar al Khafaji, the startup’s CEO and co-founder, believes the tech can overcome the labour, cost, and regulatory hurdles crippling the industry.

“It’s obvious that we need some forms of automation and robotics to solve these problems,” he tells TNW. “There’s almost no other way around it.”

At TNW Conference on June 19-20 in Amsterdam, al Khafaji will share his tips on building a thriving robotics business. Ahead of his talk, he outlined his vision of the future of construction. 

Why construction has stagnated

Before launching Monumental in 2021, al Khafaji cofounded a visualisation startup called Silk. When Silk was acquired by US analytics giant Palantir in 2016, he began pondering his next venture. His plan was to focus on a major global challenge.

“I wanted to solve a serious problem in society,” he says. “And I became obsessed with construction and infrastructure.” 

Al Khafaji was stunned to see so little technological progress in the industry. The built world in which we live, work, and play had become severely restricted as a result. His focus turned to a central problem: a productivity collapse in construction.

Labour shortages, strict regulations, and high costs, he feared, were worsening the housing crisis. New developments had become eye-wateringly expensive and painfully slow to construct. They also often result in unpopular buildings. 

The past offers unflattering comparisons. The Empire State Building, for instance, was completed in 1931 after just 410 days. Eighty-four years later, 432 Park Avenue took 1,500 days — and became infamous for leaks, malfunctions, and a divisive design.

The problem extends beyond landmark buildings. Construction of standard homes has also lost pace. The average time taken to build a single-family house went from 4.8 months in 1971 — the earliest year with data available — to seven months in 2019. Even after scaling this to account for the growth in average house size, the process is still slower today.

Longer projects also bring higher costs, with labour often forming the bulk.

“It’s very, very labour-intensive because we’ve barely automated anything there,” al Khafaji says.

Monumental is his attempt to overhaul the status quo.

Tackling the housing crisis

Al Khafaji founded Monumental in 2021 alongside his long-term business partner, Sebastiaan Visser, who serves as the company’s CTO.

Their big idea was automating on-site construction with robotics and software. They began by building a prototype robotic crane, which evolved into autonomous ground vehicles that carry building materials around a construction site.

The first finished system off the production line focused on one crucial construction craft: bricklaying. It was a logical starting point.

Bricklaying is a skilled but physically demanding and sometimes dangerous job with a rapidly dwindling workforce. In 2022, researchers found that 19 European countries had a shortage of bricklayers, which made it the occupation with the biggest labour scarcity. As a result, construction projects suffer from delays and increased costs.

With the profession struggling to attract young talent, the shortage of workers is only set to grow. In the UK, the number of bricklayers recently hit a 25-year low, and a third of them are forecast to retire within the next decade.

Monumental’s systems aim to fill the gap — and, ultimately, strengthen the supply of affordable housing.

The startup’s electric bricklayer robots work autonomously alongside humans. Using sensors, computer vision, and small cranes, the machines precisely lay bricks and mortar in walls.

The system also integrates with existing construction processes — a crucial requirement in an industry that isn’t always open to new technologies.

The robot builders

Al Khafaji compares the robots to distributed computers. Composed of multiple, interconnected modular components, they function like network devices.

To prepare the machines for construction jobs, the startup’s software models both the site and the robots themselves. A machine vision stack then allows them to localise in the building zone. While they work, AI coordinates their tasks.

“We really think of it as an operating system for construction sites,” al Khafaji says. “We’re trying to make construction more software-defined.”

In 2023, the robots completed their first large-scale, 15-metre wall. Since then, the machines have built facades for houses, canal retaining walls, and other structures that stand across the Netherlands today.

Investors have been impressed by the progress. Last year, Monumental raised $25mn in seed funding to bring the concept closer to reality. But the company still has to win over the construction industry.