Daria Mircea from Bright Spaces talks with RICS' Andrew Knight

This year I joined CREtech for the first time and had the opportunity to meet many inspiring professionals from the worlds of real estate and technology. Bringing together professionals from different industries, geographies and expertise areas is an enriching experience that contributes to the development of proptech.

One of the people I had the pleasure of meeting is Mr. Andrew Knight, Global Data and Tech Lead at RICS.

RICS is a professional organization that promotes and enforces the highest standards of land, real estate, construction, and infrastructure development and management. Through their work with others, the company develops more robust markets, paves the way for better places to live and work, and has a positive influence on society.

In his current role, Andrew is focusing on developing, improving and promoting RICS' Data Standards, which allow data exchange between service providers, technology companies and end-users in the built environment and valuation sectors.

Following the event, I had the opportunity to interview Andrew and learn more about his thoughts about CREtech, the proptech industry, the development of real estate and how technology and sustainability impact the built world.

How was CREtech London 2022?

AK: It was really nice to see and catch up with people I’ve only seen on Zoom or Teams in the past 2 years.

What struck me most about the talks was the correlation of all the trends we’ve been hearing. The pandemic has definitely accelerated multiple concepts in real estate: the hybrid style of work, reimagining the office space, an increased focus on ESG, and the challenge of lacking data on assets.?

Emphasizing the importance of data, I think that people now increasingly observe that we need more of them, across the full life-cycle of processes in real estate. So often, a BIM model stops being used after a building is built, it is very limited as to what it can provide in the long term. We need to digitize the sector and enable its players to better meet challenges around sustainability, to make working places smarter and more attractive, to make them want to go back to business districts.

Is the industry more open now to innovation and to consistently integrating it in all its processes?

AK: I am conscious that things have evolved a lot since before Covid. But at the same time, I cannot help but feel that proptech still sometimes acts separately from traditional firms. You can still see a disconnect on occasion between the customers of proptech and the proptech companies themselves.

It feels like they are sometimes still working in parallel worlds and this comes from a combination of factors. Adopting proptech solutions can be seen as costly by real estate or too disruptive. On the other hand, proptech developers must work even more closely with their potential customers. The two need to keep developing a common vocabulary and way of operating together.

But is there a future without technology?

AK: No, tech will be key. As new generations are coming, we see they are more tech-savvy, looking for digital experiences. They’re looking at things like the hybrid work policy, digitalisation, social and environmental responsibility. Demands from occupiers and asset owners and pressures to become Net Zero will be drivers of innovation and technology adoption.

I am optimistic that while it will take time, the real estate sector will be more and more digitised.

We can also talk about a change in organisational objectives, right? Companies won’t be looking only for profitability, but sustainability as well.

AK: There will always be a balance between capital and income return. But asset owners will have to answer the demands of the market. They’ll have to work much harder to get people back to the office, or if we look at retail, even more complicated. The physical shop is a destination, people only go there if there’s an experience waiting for them, such as click and collect.

Is the metaverse a trend or is it here to stay??

AK: I still struggle to get a proper definition of the metaverse, it’s a concept wrapped up in many others. Metaverses will surely be created and ones will even be very practical - they will be used for on-site meetings for a construction project, for example, or there will be social gatherings and opportunities for retailers. What we must do is pay careful attention to the value of virtual assets and to the real-world outcomes.

What should proptech focus on?

AK: Some tech solutions are really wonderful and useful, but we must be careful not to scare people off by showing them extremely sophisticated tools that don’t address real-world problems. There is a journey and people will look for the simplest things to start with. Then, when they’ll see a return on investment, they’ll want more.

We are talking about a conservative, cost-conscious industry (real estate). People will adopt tech solutions if they are easy to use and pay off. Of course, regulatory pressure to do better from an ESG perspective will also play its role. In short, if there’s an incentive, if we don’t build tech for tech sake, the adoption rate will grow.

What will the real estate industry look like in 10 years’ time?

AK: People are social beings and the need for them to meet and connect will always exist. They’ll still need offices, even though these might look completely different: there will be a mix of public and private spaces, a blend of environments with virtual meeting rooms that allow team members to gather either in person or via VR and AR.

Technology will make it easier for people to work in different places, the office being one of them. But they will look more at the quality of the space - for example, after having worked from home and enjoying my garden during my work breaks, I would like to go to a space that has an outdoor terrace and really good coffee! We will assist to a shift in what we’re expecting from our office provider: from indoor air quality to social values.

Thank you for taking the time for this interview, Andrew! It’s food for thought for all of us here at Bright Spaces. We also do believe in a world where virtual environments mix with physical ones and we aim to create these digital universes to support the growth of real estate. ESG is a topic we’re very fond of and an underlying goal of our solution. Digitalisation will happen in real estate and probably one of its more important roles will be to boost productivity and enhance human skills and communication.

?For more interviews with real estate and tech professionals, check out our blog: insights.brightspaces.tech!