The season of goodwill is also a period
can be a worry for property owners. No amount of digital information can replace human eyes, intuition and experience. For example, seven years ago, when I moved out of agency into proptech, the buzz words were ‘digital twin’. But, as usual with such things, the gestation period seems very long. The issues being wrestled with are the same as for any other digitisation – finding a common language and dataset to be trusted by everyone. Remote monitoring of sensors and security makes sense but still requires eyes-on. All the other expressed and implied advantages of having a digital twin to monitor planning and construction fall away when the reality of maintenance of a living breathing structure become apparent. Whatever you are building, there comes a point where no amount of sensors override a combination of human intuition and measured aggregation of available information. This also ignores the realm of human occupants, which then involves that killer for any digitisation: emotion. Managing property at any level is subject to management of emotions. It’s why many in the industry have a completely different skillset from those involved in, say, selling. A thicker emotional skin allied to a propensity for detail and repetition makes property managers unique. There’s no implication of a lack of emotional intelligence here, just an acceptance that it cannot be the overriding characteristic. Dealing with a block or property maintenance or repair issue whilst being shouted at really is a skillset any AI would struggle to replicate. When did you last shout down the phone when asked to ‘press two’ for the umpteenth time? There’s little doubt AI will of course have an effect and being over 60 it’s easy to be pilloried for my lack of in-depth knowledge. My days running a business in this area revolved around working out how many properties each manager could cope with and previous articles have looked into this in more depth. But there’s no doubt tech enables more efficiencies, with clever gig economy solutions and better bandwidth over wi-fi and cellular, but if you want to satisfy your own, and more importantly your clients’, aspirations you’ll need a real set of eyes. The other issue facing anyone looking for a sensible dataset on which to base any objective decisions is that there’s no standard set, yet. Huge amounts of hot air are regularly expelled on theories and there are many touting their solution. In an industry that thrives on competition and value it’s a tough fight and one that has some way to run before a standard is agreed on. One thing that bodes well for the medium-term is the number of tech businesses offering differing solutions is dwindling as many simply fail or become subject to consolidation. As mentioned above, competition drives innovation and as long as the prize remains; and with at least two fighting the possibility of a better future, it remains alive. Ed Mead is Co-Founder at Viewber
