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AI has been transforming how people work across all industries and shows no signs of letting up just yet. Building compliance is no exception, and it would be remiss of the industry to think otherwise. The administrative burden on those within our industry is ever-increasing; Building Safety Act obligations, certifications, inspections, risk assessments, reports, and the documents that support these outputs – and your Golden Thread – all rely on manual intervention, and for many, that applies to hundreds of buildings across portfolios of varying and substantial sizes.  

The Building Safety Act 2022 reshaped the way the built environment thinks about information. At its heart sits the golden thread: a single, accurate, accessible record of the information needed to design, construct, occupy and maintain a building safely across its whole life. 

When I started working in PropTech five years ago, property management systems were still mainly used by larger agencies. Today, the Building Safety Act, AI and rising expectations from residents and landlords mean spreadsheets, email threads, WhatsApp groups and post-it notes are no longer enough and can create real compliance risks.

Let’s be honest: a lot of PropTech simply moves an old job onto a new screen. Take invoice processing. Whether the bill comes from a cleaner, lift contractor, insurer or energy supplier, somebody must still identify the building, check and code it, approve it and chase any mistakes. The paper may have disappeared, but the work has not.

Of all the responsibilities faced by property managers, fire and building safety is one of the most complex, and “resident engagement” is one of the most frustratingly intangible and difficult to evidence.

Technology can be instrumental in helping address the skills shortage.As build-to-rent scales, reliable maintenance is becoming a competitive advantage and the shortage of skilled engineers its biggest threat. TrainAR, founded by former gas engineer Ettan Bazil, is using augmented reality and AI to help the trades that serve our buildings train faster and fix more on the first visit.Build-to-rent has changed what residents expect from their building. In professionally managed blocks, the speed and quality

Over the past year, Adiuvo has been rolling out a new AI-first case management platform across our business. That may sound like a technology project, but for us it is really a service project.

We hear a lot about AI from the business side of the fence. How it reduces costs, speeds up workflows, automates the repetitive. At Adiuvo, we've been investing in AI (and there is an article in this issue about our internal use) but here's the question I keep coming back to: does any of that matter if the customer doesn't want it?

Ask a managing agent where the week actually goes and the answer is rarely the site visits or the contractor meetings. It is the correspondence. Service charge queries, updates on works already in hand, and the same question about the same scaffolding asked by nine different leaseholders inside a fortnight.

Issue 144 of News on the Block is now live and available for subscribers to read online. This latest edition features a special PropTech focus, sponsored by Adiuvo, exploring how technology is reshaping the residential property management sector

As the housing sector moves towards the Future Homes Standard, much of the conversation has centred on how new homes will be heated. While low-carbon heating is undoubtedly a major part of the challenge, it is only one piece of a much bigger picture.  

Leaseholders are among the many people impacted by the cost of living crisis and many are looking to leasehold reform as a means of reducing their property costs.