Five days, fully booked halls and an outdoor area packed with construction machinery: from September 9 to 13, 2026, the 71st NordBau at the Holstenhallen in Neumünster brought the construction industry of the north together. We were there – this time deliberately without a booth of our own. Max and Philipp walked the grounds as visitors: listening, meeting partners and seeing where digitization in everyday construction really stands.
Northern Europe’s largest compact construction trade fair
NordBau is a format of its own. Around 700 exhibitors from roughly 15 countries spread across more than 20,000 square meters of hall space and about 69,000 square meters of outdoor grounds – from hand tools to crawler excavators, everything stands side by side. The organizer is Holstenhallen Neumünster GmbH, and with Denmark as its neighboring country, the fair maintains a connection that has already lasted more than 45 years.
This year, much of the program revolved around housing construction in transformation, timber construction and energy, and the skilled trades – accompanied by the congress program and CONBAU running in parallel. What interested us most was what lies between those topics: anyone who surveys, digs and documents outdoors ultimately needs processes that fit together.
Catching up with Stonex
One fixed item on the agenda was the booth of our partner Stonex. For good reason: since July, the S599 GNSS receiver has connected directly to the Vaira app on Android – pairing, correction data, tilt compensation and point capture all run entirely in Vaira, with no detour through a manufacturer app.
At the fair we could show it instead of explaining it: antenna in hand, smartphone alongside, capture a point – and the point lands in the digital construction file. It was exactly this combination of affordable hardware and an app that goes all the way to billing that opened up the conversations.
For the details, read here: Stonex S599 x Vaira: GNSS surveying now on Android too.
What we took away
Out on the open grounds, the technology has long been digital: machine control, assistance systems, connected equipment. And still, the same topic came up in conversation after conversation – what happens next. Quantity take-off, records, photos, billing. The excavator is digital; the stack of paper in the office often is not.
Being there as a visitor has an advantage you do not get at your own booth: you listen without selling. It is exactly this unfiltered feedback from construction companies, utilities and partners that we take back into development.
Next stop: Intergeo 2026 in Munich
There is not much time to unpack – from September 15 to 17 we will be at Intergeo in Munich. If you are there too, or simply want to see how digital construction documentation works with Vaira: get in touch and we will arrange a meeting.