The social welfare funds of the German construction industry, known as SOKA-BAU, have implemented an independent platform for generative artificial intelligence in cooperation with IT service provider adesso. The in-house solution is named SOKA-GPT and is based on adesso GPT technology. The objective of the initiative is to provide employees with legally compliant access to modern language models that meet the strict requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation and the European AI Act.
The catalyst for the development was an internal conflict of objectives: while demand among staff for support from generative tools in day-to-day work was growing, a centrally approved and controlled infrastructure was lacking. As SOKA-BAU manages highly sensitive data from the construction industry, the uncoordinated use of publicly accessible chatbots was categorically ruled out. Following initial in-house development efforts, the institution brought in adesso to specifically complete the system architecture and accelerate the roll-out.
Model-independent architecture on in-house infrastructure
An established partnership already exists between the two companies from previous transformation projects. Among other things, the digital service EVE for the posting of workers procedure was jointly developed. With SOKA-GPT, particular emphasis was placed on technological sovereignty. The platform is operated entirely within SOKA-BAU's infrastructure and connects flexibly to various model providers, including OpenAI, Google and Mistral. Contractual or technical lock-in to individual providers has been ruled out, meaning a change remains possible at any time.
The system has been available to all employees since late April 2026. By the end of August of the same year, the platform reached a usage rate of around 20 per cent, with an eventual target between 30 and 40 per cent. The technical implementation has proven stable in live operation and has recorded no downtime since launch.
Strategic perspectives and further expansion
Dr Michael Fahl, Technical Innovation Manager at SOKA-BAU, pointed to the partner's compelling technological competence and practical project experience. Mark Lohweber, Chief Executive Officer of adesso SE, emphasised for his part that the project exemplifies how institutions handling business-critical data can deploy artificial intelligence independently without entering into dependencies. SOKA-BAU is planning further expansion steps for 2027; initially, however, the existing solution is to be fully embedded into day-to-day operations.
