Tech Partner Programme

PropTech Connect 2024: Key Insights and Takeaways

08 October 2024

Digital transformation is driving change across the real estate sector, supporting the need for increased efficiency and innovation. PropTech Connect 2024, Europe’s largest PropTech event, brought together over 5,000 professionals from the real estate, technology, and investment sectors to help bridge the gap between technology innovators and real estate professionals. The event offered a range of sessions, including panel discussions, workshops and round tables focused on the future of technology in the real estate industry as well as an opportunity to network with peers across the market.

Aaliyah Pollock

Data and Tech Analyst, RICS

The need for better buildings

With the built environment contributing 38% of global greenhouse gas emissions, the need for sustainability initiatives is greater than ever to address both operational and embodied carbon. With over 80% of existing buildings expected to still be in use by 2050, there is a growing demand for the sector to retrofit to our existing building stock and increase their energy efficiency and minimising any additional embodied carbon. Exhibiting at the event, RICS Tech Partners Optiml and MapMortar showcased their solutions.

Optiml offers an AI-powered platform for real estate management and renovation planning, focusing on optimising cost and sustainability.
MapMortar provides a data-driven solution for decarbonisation, using AI and 3D modelling to analyse and enhance the energy performance of property portfolios.

For both existing and newly developed properties, the concept of smart buildings is now firmly established as a solution, helping property developers, landlords and tenants understand how their buildings are running, and how they can be run better. A panel around smart buildings explored the varied use cases, from adjusting the lighting within office spaces to optimising bed placement in hospitals. The panellists shared their advice on how to extract the full benefits from smart buildings, of which to they emphasised the importance of “step one”- Clearly defining the problem before implementing the solution.

What’s wrong?

How can smart technologies help?

How do we measure success?

Once the problem and opportunities are identified, priorities can be set. Are we running out of office desks on certain days? Is the HVAC system using too much energy during off-peak hours? Are we efficiently managing water usage in large facilities?

How can AI help?

As expected, “AI” in all its forms was a hot topic. From detecting leaks during drone inspections to optimising workflow management, AI offers many practical applications within across Proptech. One of the huge benefits of AI is its ability analyse vast datasets and make data-driven decisions. Exhibiting at the event, RICS Tech Partners Wüest Partner and Built AI, showcased how AI is integrated into their solutions:

Wüest Partner leverages AI to enhance real estate consulting and valuation by generating market insights, predictive models, and actionable decision-making support.
Built AI uses AI to automating financial modelling for real estate investments, enhancing data insights, and improving collaboration to eliminate missed opportunities and errors.

While many exhibitors expressed the benefits of AI, a panel on asset management offered mixed views on its progress in the industry. The panellists shared their experiences using AI for asset management tasks where adoption seems to be much slower than other industries. While AI is good at automating tasks like language translation within emails and documents, its role in finance and reporting is limited due to the sensitive and complex nature of the data. AI may be used for extracting financial and reporting data, however human oversight is still essential.

The biggest takeaway from the asset management panel was that complex solutions aren’t always the best. AI has impressive capabilities, but technological solutions must be tailored to the people using it. The industry is still seen as being tech adverse so solutions should be practical and not over complicated. Another panel mentioned that solutions are being developed by people unfamiliar with the property industry, highlighting the need for collaboration between startups and real estate professionals to create tools that truly address industry needs.

Turning Data into Decisions

In order to make effective decisions, we rely on turning data into insights. If we take smart buildings as an example, sensors collect the valuable data, but the real challenge lies in understanding and using this data effectively. Panellists mentioned two important factors that affect this:

Visualisation of data: presenting data in a way that all stakeholders can easily interpret and use.
Collaboration between stakeholders: Ensuring that data is shared with all relevant parties for collaborative decision-making.

Exhibiting at the event, RICS Tech Partner Building Passport showcased their how their solution can address these challenges. Their platform consolidates information about buildings into a single, easily understandable digital blueprint. By storing, organising, and sharing building information, Building Passport not only helps ensure compliance and enhance safety but also improves accessibility and management of building data, facilitating better decision-making.

Data accessibility and ownership were also debated. While some argue that data should be freely accessible, others point out that managing and protecting this data involves costs. Despite these debates, there is a consensus that data should at least be accessible and not kept confidential, to maximise its value.

In another panel, Andrew Knight emphasised that AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. AI solutions require vast, diverse data to deliver accurate results. As an industry we face significant challenges around data standardisation, collaboration, transparency, and accessibility. Even now, many firms rely on paper documents. Andrew Knight raised an interesting question…

While data held in document formats prevents the adoption of AI, could AI help convert these paper documents into usable digital data?

AI has the potential to accelerate the transition to digital data by addressing the lack of quality, structured digital data that prevents its effectiveness.

Looking forward

PropTech Connect 2024 highlighted the growing role of technology in shaping the future of real estate. From smart buildings to AI-powered drones, exhibitors and speakers showcased how technological solutions can address industry challenges. However, the adoption of new technologies isn’t always simple. Sessions explored the complexities of implementing these innovations, particularly in areas like data accessibility, collaboration, and the balance between automation and human oversight.